Zemuria Online
by Snowflames
Summary: Heroes weren't destined to be heroes. Ordinary people, through extraordinary circumstance, step into such roles. This is a tale of these people.
1. Editor's Foreword

**Editor's Foreword:**

As was broadly covered in the news media, the Zemuria Online incident was resolved through the effort of not a single player, but a collection of brave individuals who, though unfortunate circumstances bound them to the digital realm, chose to fight against fate instead of resigning to it.

The purpose of this book is to collect the tales from these heroes in their virtual prison, to illustrate their perspectives, thoughts and actions in their fight to survive and break out of it. Through their interactions with each other and with Kayaba's accomplices, we not only hope that the reader would be inspired by the exploits of these heroes of circumstance, but also gain a glimpse of insight into Kayaba Akihiko and his accomplices, and perhaps one day understand the true motives behind their collective actions.

We would like to offer our gratitude to the Zemuria Online players who accepted the invitation to divulge their experiences with our editorial staff during this difficult time of recuperation. There are not enough space in this Foreword to contain all their In-Game Names, so we have instead included their abbreviated profiles in Appendix A at the end of the book. In addition, a list of the In-Game Names and the Real Names of each deceased player is included in Appendix B, also at the end of the book.

These heroes—the ones who gave their lives during their brave fights for freedom, and the ones who carried their collective will that defied the god in their digital world—shall be remembered.

Nial "NialB" Burns

Editor-in-Chief, Dengeki VR


	2. Prologue

The rather large monster in front of me swept its front left hoof backwards, kicking up a not-insignificant amount of dirt. The next thing I knew, it charged at me, its single horn pointing forward like the tip of a spear. I had to dodge to the right. Despite it being covered in glistening crimson metal plates, it moved frightening quickly in a charge. The avoidance was not complete; its shoulder crashed into me and swept me aside, causing me to have to vault on my free hand to retain my balance.

Even though I was not in pain, I still took a deep breath to steady myself. The golden gauge to the upper left of my vision decreased a little, along with the number "-502" marked in red. I took the hit rather gracefully, but it still shaved away a bit more than ten percent of that HP bar.

I was a tenth of the way to greeting the Grim Reaper.

"Nerve Gear", the Virtual Reality helmet through which players accessed Zemuria Online, had no functionality to stimulate pain. It made sense; nobody liked being in pain. Still, it did not prevent the body from producing natural biological responses to perceived experiences. That monster was every bit as real as it would be if it existed in real life, and my body responded by treating it as a fight for my life.

My exhale came as the armored rhinoceros clumsily turned to face me again, its eyes glowing red with bloodlust. It was amazing how a digital representation of a monster could be read like regular animals. Or rather, I was treating it as a regular animal, one that was hell-bent on murdering me and the NPC I was escorting.

I gripped my sword tightly with one hand and glanced behind, finding a rather large and sturdy tree. The armor plating on that creature was way too tough for my sword to cut. Someone with a mace or a large-caliber rifle could probably take it head-on with their Combat Crafts without considering the armor, but I did not have that option with a sword. Similarly, as I was alone, Orbal Arts were out of the question; the spin-up and channeling time for my Orbment would be long enough for the creature to spear me with its horn.

It let out a bestial roar. Its AI was dumb even when compared to other monsters; it was too simple to understand what I was trying to do. The NPC shuffled to the side, too terrified to stay behind me. At least NPC AI was capable of doing things that would not endanger itself.

My anticipation hung thick in the air. My heart would have been racing if I were able to feel it. This body needed no heartbeat, no oxygen, and no actual food. It was not a fleshy sack that needed nutrients to sustain itself and chemicals to tell what it was supposed to feel, but I took a deep breath anyway. The sensation was strange the first time I stepped into this world as a beta tester, but I got used to it.

The frozen moment boiled over when the beast charged. Like a Spanish bull fighter I leaped to the right into a roll, allowing the beast to ram the tree behind me. The plant shook violently and painfully as leaves and immature fruits impotently pelted the creature's armor. The rhino's horn lodged itself so deep into the wood that the tree was then pressing on it and clamping it inside its massive trunk, refusing to allow its exit.

It was my chance. The creature was dazed enough that I could climb onto its back. There were small gaps between its thick armor plating; those were enough to admit my sword into its soft flesh. My weapon pierced its leathery skin underneath with little difficulty and found its vital points. A gush of blood squirted out of the wound as I pulled it out, and the rhino started howling in pain as it struggled to both throw me off and to free itself.

It was mostly successful in the former. I was shaken off of its back and rather unceremoniously landed on my bum before I had to roll out of the way of its thrashing tail tipped with a large spiky sphere. The bleeding from the wound was like a fire hose; brilliant particles sprayed out of the wound into the air. It seemed that I had severed a rather major artery, but the game chose to perform a light show instead of rendering real blood.

In its death throes, the creature thrashed about for half a minute or so before collapsing onto the ground. Then, its shape shattered into a brilliant cloud of particles that dissipated in front of me. Death was clean in Zemuria Online. It left no fleshy remains to be removed, no macabre sign that a life was extinguished. For NPCs and monsters the system controlled such as the armored rhino I had just slain, it was not such a big deal since they would always respawn. The same could not be said for other players—beings of flesh and blood that had physical presence on the other side of the digital veil.

In that sense, having neither blood nor gore from wounds made it much easier on players in many ways. Few people these days had the stomach to slaughter with their own hands the animals they put on their dinner table. Fewer still had the courage to face the death of another human.

I took out my Tactical Orbment and flipped open its large lid after making sure there were no other enemies around. The line on the device the size of a pancake started to glow as I traced the Quartz from the center toward the outer edge and whispered "Tear" with the stress on the last syllable. The device itself started to vibrate and rattle a little, an indication that maintenance on it was needed the next time I went back to town. Then, a blue stream of particles started to project from the center of the device into a small shower of azure. At the same time, my HP bar grew to the right along with "+502" popping up along the bar itself, while the shorter blue bar under that—the EP gauge—showed a small "-10".

I let out a light sigh as the device's lid snapped close with a crisp click. Another day, another successful attempt at dodging the Reaper's scythe. It frightened me a little how I had expected it to become the routine: wake up, grab breakfast, and then go on to take quests from NPCs or jobs on the bulletin board at the local Bracers Guild. Then, fight monsters, get loot, and most importantly, stay alive, because once death would find me, it would be all over.

It was all the more terrifying a possibility to entertain, because if I were to die in the forest, nobody would actually be able to tell where I took my last breath.

Staying in a town to wait for players to actually find the vaunted Sept-Terrions of Aidios to clear the game was far less dangerous. So why was I stepping outside into the woods to escort NPCs whose death should not, in theory, matter in the least bit?

Was I so addicted to the immersive Virtual Reality experience that I would risk my actual life to just experience the thrills? Or was I so naïve to think that one sixteen-year-old boy with a one-handed sword would be the one to unite the artifacts? Perhaps the Bracer Kirito was my actual self; on the other hand, who was to say that I did not step into the character too much?

I let out a light sigh and patted down my black coat. The NPC was standing there waiting for me, a full bar of gold floating above its head. He was not programmed to move unless I led on.

As I did, I thought back to the day two years ago.

The day that Kayaba Akihiko locked us all inside the world of Zemuria Online.


	3. Kirito: First Day

I still remember that day, you know? That was the same day I met Klein. I remember that red-haired swordsman swinging his sword about with sharp barks. Unfortunately, none of them connected to the armored rat in front of him. The oversized rodent seized the opportunity and leaped forward, headbutting him between the legs. He collapsed, clutching his family jewels with both his hands and legs. The sight of a red-haired man that resembled the build of a samurai from the Sengoku era rolling on the floor with a rather twisted face was enough to make me laugh almost uncontrollably.

"Ow! Ow! Sonovabitch! That hurt!" He slowly picked himself up. His groans of pain accompanied my laughter: "Hey, Kirito! This ain't funny!"

"You shouldn't feel pain, Klein," I stood in front of him and trained my eyes on the lone monster. We were in the sewers of Rolent, one of the areas that beginners like us were able to access. It was a better area to level and loot than the fields surrounding the town, but not many people came to it. For one, it stank like an actual sewer, which was not in the least bit pleasant. For another, it was rather dim inside and people could get ambushed rather easily.

"Oh, you're right! It actually doesn't hurt like it would have in real life!" Klein's theatrics of rolling on the damp floor of the sewer with his jewels well-cupped in his hands was over the minute I mentioned that fact. "Man, I hate getting kicked in the nuts!"

"You sound like you have a lot of experience with that." I did not know whether I should feel sorry for him.

"Uh, ahem! No comment," he realized his error when he stood up and patted himself. It was a good thing that the game did not simulate the detritus that should be in a sewer as well, or he would be a walking fly attractor for a good while. "Anyway, how do you even use a Combat Craft when you can't even hit it?"

"Well, first of all you have to have enough Craft Points, or CP. You have three bars to the top left of your view, right? Yellow, blue and green from top to bottom?"

"Yeah. I was wondering what the CP bar was used for. The yellow HP bar I understand pretty much intuitively, and the blue EP bar is kind of like magic points in other games, I assumed."

The rat twitched and charged at me when it saw Klein talk to me. I sidestepped its charge and turned around, placing it between the two of us: "Yeah, but it's a bit different. Let's talk about CP first. Every swing you make will slowly fill the CP gauge to a maximum of 200. Most Combat Crafts you have won't cost CP, but some more powerful Crafts would have a CP cost associated with it. Later in the game there are S-Crafts that would completely empty your CP gauge for a massive attack if and only if your gauge is at least half full."

"Hmm. Kind of unrealistic if you ask me, having to use points to activate physical skills," Klein grumbled and struck a stance in front of the monster.

"Balance reasons," I smiled at him and straightened up. "You can't have someone spam incredibly powerful S-Crafts all the time. Realistically something like that would tire the user out really quickly, but because there's no physical fatigue in the game, they had to put in the CP gauge to limit its use. Think of it like stamina."

"I guess you've got a point. Say, have you ever gotten one of these S-Craft things in beta testing?" Klein clumsily avoided the rat's tackle by leaping backwards. The bricks on the sewer's floor was a bit slick; he almost fell on his bum when he landed.

"Yeah, and it was awesome. You can't get them until you reach a certain level, though." It was a single-target skill called Howling Octave for the one-handed sword. When I used it, the system pushed my avatar to the limit, faster than even I could respond. It was a series of five incredibly fast stabs with the sword, and then a series of cuts: down, up, and down. Even though it was a single-target Craft, it inflicted enough damage to one-shot a mob at level 20.

That was another difference between real life and Virtual Reality. In real life physical skills and abilities could rarely be measured in numbers. If someone was stabbed in the heart or cut in the carotid with a fruit knife, the end result would be the same as if the deed was done with Excalibur.

In a Virtual Reality like Zemuria Online, numbers and statistics were everything. Results of attacks and defenses were determined according to a certain set of equations, all of which took input values: numbers from player stats, from item stats, from environmental stats, and from monster stats. Expectations could be built and plans could be formulated around to these numbers. Knowing one's opponents' stats could mean the difference between a crushing defeat and a glorious victory.

"Wow, really? I guess I'd better step up my game if I want to get one of those!" Klein grunted as he made a downward swing. I caught his widening eyes as the blade glowed red for a brief moment before his body was almost forcibly brought into a stab toward the rat's underside. The first swing was but a feint: it caused the rat to leap into mid-air to avoid, only to be caught with the stab.

"Whoa," he looked at his hand and sword with disbelief. The rat collapsed into a heap on the ground before disappearing in a bright cloud of broken polygons, its deletion accompanied by the sound of shattering glass.

"That was a Craft. Now you just have to train yourself into doing it without thinking about it," I smiled and patted him on the shoulder to snap him out of the trance.

"Sweet!" The expression on his face changed from awe to giddiness. He swung a couple more times and finally got his sword to light up in a flash of red again: "This is awesome! So if a Craft doesn't connect, the system would just stop helping me, huh?"

"Yeah, though if it actually costs CP, the system will deduct it form the gauge regardless of whether or not it connects," I remarked, walking further into the sewers.

"That makes sense. I guess they want people to time their use of the more powerful abilities," Klein followed closely behind. "You mentioned there's a difference between this EP gauge and regular magic points before..."

"Yeah. The EP gauge is actually an indication of the charge in your Tactical Orbment Device," I glanced around and saw no monsters, so I turned around and swiped down with my right index finger in the air in front of me. A menu appeared by my hand on a white background with black text, and I tapped a couple of entries to bring out my own device. "You should have one given to you when you logged in for the first time."

"Oh, so that's what this pocket watch thing is called. How do I use this?" Klein had his own device in his hand, a similar object with intricate patterns on its lid.

"Flip open the lid. See the seven circular holes on the surface, connected by lines? Those are slots to install Quartz Circuits. Once you install Quartz Circuits into the slot, you can use the device to cast Orbal magic."

"Yeah but I only see one open slot. The others are closed off."

"You have to go to an Orbal workshop to get someone to open it up for you in exchange for some Sepith. You should have gotten some of that from that rat you just killed. You can get Quartz from the workshop for a nominal fee in Mira and its material cost, which is also usually Sepith."

"Oh, yeah. I was also wondering what that was for." Klein scratched his head with a goofy smile. "Man, this game's really detailed; they've really thought the world through."

"The game's designed like an old-school RPG. When I was in the Beta only Rolent and the areas nearby were open, but it had enough content to keep me playing for a month!"

"Sweet! I can't wait till I can get to explore everywhere! And being inside the game like this? I still can't believe I can see and touch the environment instead of my monitor and keyboard!"

I smiled at the enthusiasm he displayed: "We're in a sewer, Klein, so I don't think that's as much a bonus as you think it may be."

"Hey, that's just cold!" He pouted like a child. "It might've lost its shine on you, but it's the first time I'm in FullDive like this! This is awesome! Thank god for the times we live in!"

"You're being overly dramatic," I chuckled, even though I could not say that I did not share his sentiment. "FullDive" technology had revolutionized human-computer interaction in general and gaming in particular. Ever since it was realized in the form of the Nerve Gear helmet, it had captivated geeks and gamers everywhere, and since I sat right in the middle of that overlap between geeks and gamers, I had followed its development since its conception.

Granted, the first Virtual Reality was not that impressive. It was a house-sized environment with no front door and locked windows. Still, the experience was described as "immersive", "surreal" and "lifelike". Reviewers from the industry hailed it as the ultimate evolution in human-computer interaction and "the controller to end all controllers". Grand plans were conceived. One review said that the internet could one day be something that humans could physically experience. People could meet together and talk face to face without ever leaving their homes. Monsters could be as real to you as your pet. The potential applications of such a technology would be limitless.

I read all of them: reviews, critiques, every forum post about Nerve Gear and FullDive. So when Argus announced the closed beta for Zemuria Online at E3, both the entire industry and I let our excitement boil over into full-fledged fanaticism. The first MMO game to use FullDive technology as the sole method of control, the game was named E3 Best of Show, Best of Online Multiplayer and Best Roleplaying Game in addition to becoming the most anticipated videogame ever announced.

It would be "the game to end all games", as the company stated proudly in its marketing material. For the first time in the history of gaming, that claim had some truth to it. To say that it was a simple MMORPG was to do it injustice, as would saying that it was a simple MMOFPS or even a MMORTS. The game combined facets and tropes from all over the gaming genre, making it one of the most ambitious games and indeed the most ambitious software project in the history of mankind.

I was among the first hundred to sign up for the public beta. I still remembered the Friday when the Nerve Gear helmet came in the mail along with a beta key. That was, without a doubt, the best day in my life. I locked myself in my room for that entire weekend, making my way through the beautiful rural town of Rolent and its surroundings, practicing my skill and getting used to casting Orbal Magic through completing quests and hunting monsters.

It was the best weekend I ever had.

Too bad the closed beta only lasted a month and had not nearly the full set of features Argus would later deliver. A large amount of the system was to become player-driven instead of being limited to just the economy. Players can affect the political climate, invent new gadgets, create new Crafts, and even put up quests. It was to be a truly immersive experience, designed to adapt and morph according to player action. It would also ensure that the company would have an ample amount of content without devoting too much resources on it. In their words, Argus was there to ensure the game would run smoothly; the players would ultimately shape the experience of their own game and forge paths as if it were real life.

In short, it was the perfect MMO, even though it was delayed by two years between the beta and its actual release.

"So, first time in FullDive, huh?" The sound of shattering glass made me realize that I let my thought wander a bit too much. Klein was standing in front of me, a small window of items flashing for a brief moment by his hand before he hit the "OK" button on it. He had just cleared another pack of rats.

"Yeah. I can't believe how they limited the first world-wide release to ten thousand copies for each region and how they did not allow online pre-ordering. I would have thought that they'd want to make a lot of money from this, but there I was, camping out in front of goddamned Sofmap with a bajillion other people waiting for the midnight release. You're one lucky bastard to get a free copy mailed to you just because you're a beta tester." I let him rant. I did not have to stand and camp outside a store after all.

"Uh… Sorry?"

"Don't worry about it. I'm not blaming you for anything; it's just luck, is all," he grinned and slapped me on the back with his large, hairy hand. The service started worldwide at around 1 PM Japanese Standard Time, and I was in game 33 seconds later. I met Klein three minutes after that just as I was about to head to the weapons shop to trade in my weapons voucher.

"You look like you know what you're doing! Are you a beta tester? Please help me! I'm so confused! I don't know how this game works!" He prostrated in front of me at the time, begging. I saw no harm in helping him, so there we were, killing rats in the sewers of Rolent.

I glanced at the clock. The game had a rather reactive interface; when I thought about time, a small digital clock would automatically appear at the top right of my field of view. It only applied to common thoughts like time or menu, but it was an impressive feature nonetheless: "It's almost five o'clock. You want to keep killing these things and go grab a Quartz at the workshop in town? Then I can show you how to use Orbal magic."

"Well, I called for pizza to be delivered at half past five, so I'm afraid I'll have to bail this time around. Gotta feed myself well if I'm going to do my best here!" Klein scratched his cheek with a bit of embarrassment: "Hey, listen. Thanks so much for what you've done today! You've no idea how much you've helped me!"

"Uh, it's no problem…?" I returned a shy smile. Damn it, I'm not used to strangers praising me! Think other thoughts, quick: "You've planned this all out, haven't you? Even timing your food deliveries?"

"No kidding! Listen, I got a few real-life friends in Rolent, too. I was thinking of meeting up with 'em and showing 'em the ropes after I get some grub. You up for it? We'll friend each other and send messages back and forth. How's that?"

"Erm…" I was not certain. Klein seemed to be a good guy that I could get along with. For one, he did not bother hiding his personality from me, always being straight and blunt with his opinions. It made things simpler in terms of our relationship; the straightforwardness was something that was rarely appreciated, especially in Japan. Not having met his friends, I couldn't possibly say that they were the same as him.

"Okay! Then it's decided! I'll see ya later tonight, Kirito!" He wrapped his arm around my shoulder and gave it a hard squeeze.

"Wha—hey! Listen to what I'm saying! I don't think that's a good idea—!"

"Don't sweat it! They're all good people and gamer geeks, so we're all gonna get along just fine!" He gave me the goofiest smile I had ever seen up till that point in time. Then, he swiped along the menu and tapped a few options before glancing up at me again with a confused expression: "Uh, this is kind of embarrassing, but where's the 'log out' button?"

"Hm? What are you talking about? Isn't it under 'System' and—oh."

I remembered that moment as if it happened five minutes ago. That moment when I laid my eyes on a patch of white instead of the actual button with "Log Out" written in black coloring was when I realized that something was wrong.

As far as I knew, the only ways to get out of FullDive were either through logging out from the game's interface or removing the Nerve Gear helmet from someone's head. Argus had officially discouraged the latter behavior through repeated public service announcements, as having the helmet removed while a user was still in FullDive could cause serious consequences for the brain. Logging out through the interface, therefore, was the only way that we could safely exit.

At that moment, the exit no longer existed. We were, in essence, trapped inside the game.

"This has never happened before," I tried to comfort Klein despite having a long list of questions in my head. "It's probably a bug. The GMs are pretty on top of things so it'll be resolved quickly."

"Yeah, let's hope so. I ordered a Hawaiian meat deluxe pizza with extra toppings!" He was worried, I could tell; if I were in his shoes—namely, being the first time into FullDive—I would probably have the same reaction as he had.

"Menu… System… Logout… Darn," I muttered as I swiped the menu again. The button was not just grayed-out; that would imply that it existed and had a function but was somehow disabled.

"Come on, GM, work faster! I don't want my pizza to grow cold when I get out of here!" Klein whined with a frustrated growl, checking the menu once every three seconds. "Hey, Kirito… you know another way of getting out of here?"

It was not as if I did not share his sentiments: "Well, the only other way is to pull the helmet off of your head."

"Didn't Argus warn users repeatedly not to do that? Like it could result in brain damage and everything?"

"Yeah, they did, so it would be a desperate last measure. Besides, we can't do it ourselves; someone else has to come over and do it for us."

"Oh, shit. I live alone. Do you live with anyone?"

"Yeah, my mother and a little sister. They're going to know something's wrong by dinner time if I don't make it downstairs." I doubt either one of them would risk it by removing my Nerve Gear Helmet. At the moment, I did not know if I was reassured by that thought.

"I don't have anyone. Like, everyone who knows where I live are now in this game. What if I'm stuck like this forever!? Cold pizza tastes worse than horse shit!" Klein pulled on his red hair in a rather clumsy dance of frustration.

"…Putting aside how you got to know that in the first place… what do you say? Let's get out of the sewers and back into town?" We needed more information, I decided. For example, we needed to understand the scope of the problem, mainly how many people were affected and how wide an area it covered in the game. The Liberl Kingdom was where we were dropped when we logged in. A small kingdom on the continent of Zemuria sandwiched between the larger Erebonian Empire to the north and the Calvard Republic to the southeast, the entirety of Liberl was contained in a data center in Japan. From the information released before the game's launch, non-Japanese Asian players would start in Calvard and European players in Erebonia, because the countries were hosted in datacenters in Asia and Europe, respectively. There was also the Autonomous State of Crossbell, which served as the starting nation for the American players.

If the problem was simply local in scope, then it may be possible to contact someone in one of the other three countries to get word out to the public. I understood at that time that it was a distant hope and perhaps a little bit foolish on my part, but I was hanging onto its faint glimmer.

"Yeah, I'm sick and tired of this sewer—wait, what's going on?"

There was a slight tingle around my skin. Our surroundings suddenly seemed a lot darker; even the light Orbments on the walls of the sewer seemed much dimmer.

I saw Klein glowing in a blue light. I presumed I was doing the same because the ground around me was lighting up as well. I held out my hand in front of my eyes. It was turning transparent when a pillar of light erupted around Klein. With an almost panicked scream, he disappeared with the light.

I would join him in the town square in Rolent moments later, where Kayaba Akihiko began our nightmare.

* * *

><p>Appendix A:<p>

**In-Game Name**: Kirito  
><strong>Nicknames<strong>: The Black Swashbuckler  
><strong>Level<strong>: 150  
><strong>Orbment Configuration<strong>: 4-3-2 (Enigma), 5-3-3 (Arcus)  
><strong>Orbment Affinity<strong>: Time x2 (Enigma), Time x2 + Water (Arcus)  
><strong>S-Crafts<strong>: Howling Octave, Nova Ascension  
><strong>Favorite Master Quartz<strong>: Vermillion, Muragumo  
><strong>Weapons<strong>:  
><em>Zemurian Repulsor<em>: One-Handed Sword, +1500 STR, +10% Crit Chance, +10% Armor Penetration. Made by Lisbeth. Attack Type: Slash A, Stab B  
><em>ZCF Pistol XM-0+<em>: One-Handed Orbal Pistol, +1000 STR, +20% Crit. Select-Fire (Semi-automatic, Three-round burst), 15 round magazine capacity. Effective range: 100m. Maximum range: 300m. Made by TitaR. Attack Type: Shoot A, Smash D  
><strong>Skills<strong>: One-Handed Sword MAX, Pistols MAX, Unarmed MAX, Fishing 873, Awareness MAX, Parry MAX, Cloaking MAX, Extended Weight Limit MAX  
><strong>Extra Skills<strong>: Gun and Sword MAX, Quick Reflexes MAX, Hyper Perception MAX  
><strong>In-Game Affiliation<strong>: Bracer's Guild (Senior Bracer, Rank D), Zeiss Central Factory (Senior Field Tester), Angler's Guild (Rank B Angler)  
><strong>In-Game Nationality<strong>: Liberl


	4. Lloyd (Llob): First Day

_Editor's Note: In the interest of privacy protection, real names were replaced with in-game names where appropriate._

My first memory of Zemuria Online was the sunlight that shone on my face when I spawned in Crossbell City. It wasn't a surprise to me; we were 17 hours behind Japanese Standard Time on the US West Coast, so the time that the service started was quite conveniently located just after dinnertime.

"Ugh… so bright…!" I mumbled, shielding my eyes as I spawned. I expected the brightness; I just didn't expect Nerve Gear could replicate the warmth of sunshine on my skin and the effect of it on my rather unprepared retina as well.

"You'll get used to it," my brother chuckled. Perhaps because we were diving from the same house, his avatar spawned beside me wearing similar outfit as I did. At the start of the game we were given the most basic equipment: a plain T-shirt, a pair of pants, and a pair of nondescript sneakers. There were some variance in color, of course, and that was customizable, but the general style remained the same.

I didn't need to particularly think about turning my head as I expected. The helmet captured my desire—rather, the signals that my brain sent when I tried to do it—and my field of vision shifted to point toward him. His avatar was about a head taller than I was, being a towering 6'6" in height, and he was wearing an orange shirt with black sleeves. The system also replicated his curly neck-long hair onto his avatar.

I chose to have straight dark auburn hair like I had in real life, and a black T-shirt with grey sleeves. The customization was cosmetic, but I was happy to be able to at least change some of the appearance values at character creation.

"I'm back, Crossbell!" He stretched long and hard before letting out these words in a loud declaration. "It's been a while since I tasted the air here."

I glanced around. We spawned in Crossbell City. To be precise, we spawned in the central square of Crossbell City. The guys at Argus designed an environment to host in each of their datacenters, because according to them one datacenter could not possibly handle the combined compute and service requirements of the entire world of Zemuria.

As for the world, I heard it was big but I expected nothing close to this. Laid out in front of me was a rather large open space. At the center of the open space, there was a large bronze bell suspended under a set of crisscrossed beams, which was in turn surrounded by rows of flowers and greenery. The space was apparently the intersection of four major roads; each one of them was marked with an arch that had the street names inscribed on it.

At the four corners of the square were large establishments. Directly opposite to me was the Times Mall, built with white limestone. It had a large clock on its logo from the 1920s, and it was two stories tall like a real mall. To its left across the street that led to the Administrative District was a smaller brick building, but it was no less impressive. It was called "Orbal Workshop Genten", and its signage flashed in neon colors even in broad daylight. To my left hand side was an ornate building built with what seemed like marble. It was also two stories tall, but it was shorter than the Mall and smaller than the Workshop. It, instead, had the style of buildings from Europe in the 1850s. The equally retro signage said "le Restaurant Vingt-Sept", which I assumed would be a certain indication that it served French cuisine.

The scale wasn't the only thing that was impressive. It was the texture being rendered and the atmosphere. I could even smell a faint scent of cream and roux from the restaurant. The experience felt nothing like a traditional video game. Neither Dragon Age nor Elder Scrolls could create an experience like this. I thought trinkets like the Oculus Rift that he had painstakingly procured and preserved, but they paled in comparison to what this helmet delivered to me.

"Pretty amazing, huh?" The warmth from my brother's hand on top of my head snapped me back from my awe-induced trance. Even the pats he gave me inside the game felt like the ones in real life.

"Yeah," I answered, somewhat sheepishly. I finally understood why he was so obsessed with it ever since he entered that closed beta.

"Well, there'll be plenty of this to enjoy in the years to come," he cracked his grin at me before glancing around, "Now, where's Cecile…"

"Are you looking for me, sweetie?" The calm and reserved voice of my brother's fiancée approached from behind, and both of us turned around. The initial gear given to female players had a bit more freedom in customization. She wore a rather conservative beige blouse and an almost ankle-long skirt, along with a pair of flat-bottomed shoes. She retained that head of blonde hair she had in real life, as well; Big Bro always said he loved her looks with long hair.

"Hey, there you are!" My brother greeted her with a hug. "Did you just log in?"

"Yeah, customizing my avatar took some time." I glanced at the clock on my HUD. It said "13:12" in big numbers for a moment before it automatically converted to "8:12 PM". We all lived in the same house so latency couldn't be that different, which means my sister-in-law-to-be took 10 minutes to customize her avatar.

There had to be a lot of available options to choose from, I mused.

"So, what do you think? Little pipsqueak here went googly-eyed when he logged in." My brother turned around and wrapped an arm around her waist. She, being six feet tall, wrapped her arm around my brother's broad shoulders in turn.

"I didn't!" I denied. He was telling the truth, though.

"It is amazing," she said with a smile more radiant than the sun. "I think we could have our dates here instead of going out."

"Wait till you see the other parts of the world, honey. We can travel the world without ever leaving our house! This'll be awesome!" he used his free hand to flick open a menu. A dialog box opened in front of me. To be honest, it was weird seeing these kind of artifacts from the WIMP era pop up in a virtual reality game, but I couldn't complain because what to do was intuitive to me.

"'Guib' would like to invite you to his party. Accept?"

"Your taste in user names is weird as ever, Guy," she smiled at the statement in her own dialog box, which I assumed was similar to mine.

"One shouldn't use their real name when creating an online gaming account. Besides, you should have seen what little pipsqueak picked for his own IGN. 'Llob'? I mean, if you read it out loud, it sounds dumber than mine!"

"Hey! Don't make fun of it!" I protested as I clicked "Yes" on the dialog box. Now that I thought about it, I should have chosen a more descriptive name than just "Llob". I have to say, though, after a couple of years in that identity, I have grown attached to it. But then again, it sounded like I was a slime of some sort, so it wasn't like I wasn't justified in having others call me by my first name.

My brother and Cecile's stat bars appeared under my name to the top left. His name had a little crown right beside it, indicating his status as the party leader. These were artifacts left over from the World of Warcraft era of MMOs, so I wasn't really surprised back then about their existence.

"What now?" She asked, glancing around as well. "Where do we go?"

"Well, let's explore the city first. This is the only major NPC hub in the entire Autonomous State, after all," He switched to only holding her hand.

For the next handful of hours, we walked along the streets paved with massive slabs of what seemed like fabricated concrete. I thought the Central Square was impressive, but in no way was I prepared for the scale of the city itself. It was truly a massive metropolis in the virtual world, second perhaps only to Heimdall the Crimson Capital in the Empire. The entire city was divided into six distinct districts, with each district as big or even bigger as the Central Square. The Western District and the Residential District were mainly populated with housing, as indicated, but the Western District had more apartments in them while the Residential District had rows upon rows of houses. The Eastern District was like the local Chinatown, with Chinese billboards everywhere and an architectural style that was similar to the photos I saw of the Forbidden City. Old Town was, as its name suggested, filled with old buildings, but by no means was it the slums of the city. Instead, the buildings evoked the feel of old townships in Europe with stone-paved streets and vine-covered walls, pointing to the lack of modernization in the area. The Harbor District had a lot of buildings divided into offices and storefronts, with a park in the center and a lighthouse out in an extended pier into the lake. The Administrative District had the City Hall and the Crossbell Police Department offices as well as the City Library.

We ended up in the Entertainment District last. The style there was a strange mix of the 60s and the 20s: the liberal use of neon signage combined with the audaciousness of advertisements created what seemed like the Time Square of the city. The entire district, however, seemed to be focused on the theater at the northwestern corner of the district. It was a massive theater built in stone, and it was about three stories tall. It had no name on a sign anywhere, but two large banners draped over each side of the entrance showed the logo of the troupe it hosted. It showed a dancing woman with her back arched; her legs along with what seemed like a strip formed the letter A while her hair and the rest of her body formed the letter R. The emblem spelled out the word "Arc En Ciel" with some other letters. The theater itself sat on an elevated platform with stairs leading up from the fountain at the center to it. By the time we stood at the top of the stairs at the entrance of the theater, we realized that the pavement spelled out the same emblem with differently colored stone. Faced with the magnificence of the theater, somehow the small casino to its right and the massive hotel to its right appeared insignificant.

"This is lovely," Cecile breathed. "It's like Broadway except with fewer people."

"Apparently the Arc En Ciel Troupe is also recruiting dancers," my brother gestured to the sign pasted on the door of the theater, "Wanna give the quest chain a try? I'm sure you'll look gorgeous on stage!"

"I'm… really not the type of person for that," she blushed heavily. I didn't think so, either; Cecile was more content caring for her patients and staying at home than going for something showy like that.

"You think Ilya might go for something like that, though?"

"Yeah. She would probably be very good at it, too, but I didn't think she'd be here. She's not the type that's really into gaming at all."

"Oh, don't worry, I convinced her to come. I told her to meet here. I told Arios to meet us here, too. Figures; he's never on time."

"Honey, he's always on time. Wait a minute; doesn't he have to take care of his daughter at the hospital?" Arios was my brother's partner in the local police. He was a close friend of ours, even though he was about 10 years older than my brother. We spent Christmas together last year with him and his daughter, and only recently did we know that she was being admitted to the hospital again.

His daughter was about 12 years old. Her mother and she got into a traffic accident when she was young. Her mother didn't make it. She did, but there was some pretty bad physical damage done to her eyes. She went in and out of Cecile's hospital after that. He had to sell most of what they owned and move into a smaller apartment to be able to save up for surgeries. My brother arranged a little fund for her, and everyone in the local police force pitched in; along with insurance money, he was able to pay the doctors to keep her condition from getting worse, but her sight was something that no amount of money could have bought back.

"Yeah. I don't know. I told him about the Gear, and he left in a hurry. He asked for leave a week earlier than I did. And then I got a text yesterday morning saying that he's going to be online today."

"Dr. Chevinsky doesn't really tell me anything about Serenity either because he didn't think it was my business, but I heard they're thinking about putting her in the Gear for testing." Arios and my brother almost always did everything together. My brother would drop by the hospital with him after patrol to visit her, and then they would meet Cecile, and my brother would pick her up and go home while Arios stayed with his daughter for the night.

"Yeah, I know. I don't know what he's thinking—wait, what? Are you serious?" His jaw almost dropped onto the floor. "Doesn't that require, like, a hundred thousand FDA approvals or something because it's like a human trail?"

"I'm sure he has it all figured out. He's more responsible than you are, you know?"

"Hey that hurts! I'm the one who got Ilya in the game!"

"Yes, yes, thank you for that," Cecile smiled with a bit of mischievousness. "Sometimes you scare me with how motivated you are."

"I just want you to be happy, y'know?"

"Oh, you…"

"Ahem," I cleared my throat awkwardly. "So, what next? It's almost 1 AM. Don't you both have work tomorrow? I mean, I still have school."

"Oh, I used my vacation time for this so I'm fine." Damn him. By the time I came back home from school the next day he'd probably be like 20 levels ahead of me already.

"I have a rotating day off tomorrow, so I'll be fine too." Well, that was reassuring, because at least he wouldn't go to dangerous places just to level faster. I could still catch up with him if I could come straight back home after school and maybe go to bed a bit later. I might have to just bail out of the movie Jose and Sylvia were dragging me to see, though. The girls wouldn't be happy, but who cares?

"I am going to bed," I said with a long, drawn-out yawn. It didn't really matter how excited I was; I needed either bed or a good dose of Red Bull. "How do I log out?"

"You swipe your finger like this to open the menu," my brother showed me. The menu opened as I expected; how could it not? It was a computer. Even I knew that computers do only what humans taught it to do.

"And go under 'System'… wait a second." My reaction was pretty much the same as my brother's. Under the System submenu, there wasn't anything remotely related to "Log Out".

"Hey, you're not jerking me around this time, right?" I snapped at him just to make sure.

"Why do I want to do that when you're trying to leave the two of us alone?" He snapped back. He had a point. "It should be there under 'System'."

"Maybe you remembered wrong?" Cecile swiped open her menu too.

"I can't find it anywhere." In fact, all three of us checked everywhere in the menu and no such button was found.

"Maybe this game has some other method of logging out?" She suggested. There was a slight hint of worry in her voice.

"No, I'm pretty sure this is the only way. Pulling off the helmet is another, but that's… well, dangerous."

"What's a little brain damage compared to being stuck in the virtual world—what the—!?" Before I could finish the sentence, a blue magic circle appeared under me. The same happened to Bro and Cecile, too. With a burst of light, we were force-teleported to in front of the International Bank of Crossbell building.

The building was the tallest in Crossbell. It had eight stories and was built like a modern office building. The square in front of it was then packed with players; we were teleported into a small empty pocket to the south of the building.

"What's going on?"

"I thought there's no teleportation in the game!"

"Hey, is anyone recording this?"

"How the hell do you even record?"

"Yo, who's got Fraps?"

"Is this an event or something?"

"Who knows? I just want to get back to hunting already!"

"Just leave the area, then!"

"I can't, you moron! There's this red force-field thing blocking the way!"

The chatters between players were loud and disorienting. It wasn't as bad as a fast-scrolling chat window in more popular online discussion channels, but it was like standing in the middle of a meeting room where everyone was arguing with everyone else. My head felt like it was about to explode.

"Do you know what's going on, honey?" Cecile asked.

"No, I have no clue." A glance at his face made me hold my questions. He rarely if ever made straight faces.

"May I have your attention, please?"

A voice boomed in perfect English. The crowd of about ten thousand quieted immediately. All of us glanced up, because it came from the sky, only to see it turn into a blood-red hemisphere of tessellated hexagon.

"Is this a server bug?" I whispered to my brother as murmurs between players resumed.

"No. There used to be texture errors and rendering faults in the beta, but the admins and devs were pretty quick to patch those."

"First, welcome to the world of Zemuria Online. My name is Kayaba Akihiko." A huge figure appeared over the IBC building seemingly out of solidified shadow. It was a hooded specter of some sort with glowing red eyes and a rather large pair of hands.

"Kayaba!" Brother snapped at the name.

"Who is he, darling?"

"He's the mastermind behind the entire idea of Zemuria Online. He was the so-called project lead, but he looked over mostly the technical details of the implementation."

I thought it was neat at the time how the big shot appeared personally in such a dramatic fashion. Maybe it was his way of welcoming us into the world: "Wow! This is cool!"

"Please allow me to assure you that the disappearance of your logout buttons is by no means a bug. The Zemuria Online system is working very well as intended," the voice boomed after a pause, and then paused again to let the message sink in.

"So he disabled the logout buttons just for this event, huh?" This was even cooler than I imagined!

"No way," my brother hissed. "Something's not right."

"What? What do you mean, honey?" Cecile clutched the arm of my brother's avatar tighter.

"As many of you are aware, the Goddess Aidios bestowed seven treasures upon humanity. The Sept-Terrions, as they were called." Another pause. "But twelve hundred years ago, the Goddess sealed them away, plunging humanity into an age of darkness and strife until fifty years ago when the Orbal Revolution and the Industrial Revolution started."

He wasn't talking about the real world. There was no Orbal revolution in the real world and the Industrial Revolution started over a hundred years ago. He was talking about in-game lore.

I held my breath. He was laying out the background, I was certain. We were the heroes destined to find these seven treasures, and he was just getting us started.

I was so confident in that hypothesis, I was absolutely unprepared for what came next.

"Players of Zemuria Online! You must find the Sept-Terrions and gather them together. Only then will the Logout functionalities be enabled. Only then will you be able to return to the real world."

Wait a minute.

What.

What.

My heart froze.

The silence of ten thousand humans was enough to crush me under its weight.

"To make this game a bit more interesting, I have bestowed a gift to all of you. Please open your inventory and find an item named 'Mirror of Truth'."

I did so, mechanically. My brain wasn't really processing anything back then, but I remember taking out the item, which became a mirror the size of my hand. I stared into it blankly, and moments later it started to glow blindingly bright.

"What—!?"

"Hey! You're not a woman!"

"Wow, motherfucking assholes dressed as girls, I fucking knew it!"

"What the hell is this!?"

"I don't want to look like myself in real life!"

"What the fuck! Come on!"

"As you can see, the item customized your avatar into a form that resembled you in real life, and your stats have been adjusted accordingly," the voice boomed again. The item itself was just an ordinary mirror then. It reflected a pimply-faced youth with slightly curlier hair than I had customized. I patted down on my body; it was a bit lankier than I customized with not as much muscle, but the parts that should have been there were there.

I couldn't say the same for some others. Suddenly a lot more people in the game were dressed in drag—no, saying that would just insult the drag queens. They were dressed in clothes of the other gender. They were rightfully unhappy: the dreams of them experiencing the world in another gender's body were so brutally dashed just a moment ago.

"I have also added a functionality in your Nerve Gear helmets. If anyone were to forcibly remove them, disconnect them from power, or cause disruption to the connectivity between it and the server in any form for a prolonged period of time, the mechanism will activate. It will use the reserve batteries inside it to fire microwave emitters installed inside the helmet. In layman's terms, the helmet will turn into a large microwave oven for your brain."

"Son of a bitch," my brother snapped.

"The same will happen if your HP bar in game is reduced to zero. As a consequence, all items, Arts and Crafts capable of reviving a dead player have been removed from the system. Rest assured, the authorities have been notified of your locations and provided with instructions on how to move you safely to a medical facility."

So, if we would die in the game, our physical bodies will also…?

"Now, brave players of Zemuria Online! Venture out and carve your path through this world! I eagerly await your heroics!"

With that, the big shadowy figure disappeared. The sky returned to its normal coloration. And the simmering crowd boiled over. Items started flying into the air as people protested, but nobody was there to hear them.

"Fuck you, douchebag! I want outta here!"

"This can't be real! This can't be…!"

"The logout button ain't back, yo! This is bullshit!"

"I use Comcast, dammit! I'm going to fucking haunt you if they end up killing me!"

"I have satellite! I'm fucked! I'm so fucked!"

I couldn't log out. There was no way I could go to that movie the next day. In fact, there was no way I could even go to school the next day. What was going to happen to my grades? I had SATs coming up the next year! I still want to get into a decent college!

Looking back at it, I think at the time I was panicking a little at the prospect of never being able to return to the real life. It was true; the world was going to hell in a hand basket and I was sitting smack dab in the middle of it. The fear of losing my life permanently—both literally and figuratively—overwhelmed the rapidly-receding excitement of being in a world where I could pretend to be an adventurer to save the world.

I turned my head to look at my brother. He remained silent. Cecile, too, though I could see their hands held together as she leaned against him.

"I'm not going to see little Billy the day after," she mumbled into his ears, "he needs me to read to him before bedtime or he would have nightmares."

"I know."

"And Susie. She needs someone to talk to and her bandages need to be changed twice a day. We're already short-handed as it is."

"I know."

"And Serenity. She… If Arios is in this game… Guy, we need to get out of here. I can't leave her alone like that."

"I know." My brother's answers didn't change much. He heaved a heavy sigh before turning to address both of us: "We aren't going to get out of here in time for any of that to happen. We can't do anything about that now, but we can do something else, and that is to stay alive.

"They're going to get the governments to move us to hospitals. They're going to get us hooked up to life support machines. They're going to do everything they can outside to get us out of this virtual coffin. But they can't do it alone. We have to fight from the inside as well."

My brain was buzzing. Every word he said sent my ears ringing. He was right. Of course he was; he was always right. The Earth would not stop spinning. The world—both outside the "game" and inside—would not stop turning. Life would go on regardless of what we chose to do. Sitting around in shock wasn't going to reclaim our lives.

"What are you suggesting?"

"First we find Ilya. She's not one to renege on a promise, and who knows how she'd taken the news?" His eyes burned with purpose. "And then we're going to find a spot and level ourselves. This is a game, and we have to get stronger to survive. I know a couple hunting spots that hopefully haven't had people beat us to it just yet."

"And what then?" There was an aura around him that compelled me to cast aside my fear. There was nothing to be afraid of. Death was far from an absolute certainty. We still had our skills and our Arts. We still had mobility. And most importantly, this Kayaba person had just given us all a purpose.

"Then we hunt that bastard down and get out of this hell-hole," he gritted his teeth.

* * *

><p>Appendix A:<p>

**In-Game Name: **Klein  
><strong>Nickname: <strong>The Crimson Samurai  
><strong>Level: <strong>150  
><strong>Orbment Configuration: <strong>3-3-3 (Enigma), 4-3-3-2 (Arcus)  
><strong>Orbment Affinity: <strong>Fire x2 (Enigma), Fire x2 + Wind (Arcus)  
><strong>S-Crafts: <strong>Zetsu Hachiyou Messatsu (絶八葉滅殺), Momiji Issen (椛一閃)  
><strong>Favorite Master Quartz: <strong>Chevalier  
><strong>Weapons:<strong>  
><em>Kage-Ichimonji: <em>Katana, +1300 STR, +10% SPD. On Crit: Inflict Bleed of 30% damage over 10 seconds. Made by Lisbeth. Attack Type: Slash S.  
><strong>Skills: <strong>One-Hand Curved Blades MAX, Enhanced Light Armor MAX, Awareness 728, Light Shields 921, Unarmed Combat MAX, Quick Equip MAX, Parry 938, Extended Weight Limit MAX  
><strong>Extra Skills: <strong>Katana MAX, Hachiyou-Ittou: Momiji (八葉一刀：椛) 667, Hachiyou-Ittou: Mute (八葉一刀：無手) 334  
><strong>In-Game Affiliation: <strong>Guild Fuurinkazan (Guild Master), Bracer's Guild (Affiliated Specialist), Royal Liberl Army (Honorary Captain)  
><strong>In-Game Nationality: <strong>Liberl


	5. Shizuku (Serenity): First Day

_Editor's Note: In the interest of privacy protection, real names were replaced with in-game names where appropriate._

I didn't really remember the day when Mom died and I lost my sight. My memory for that was blurry at best. I only remembered waking up in a hospital bed, aching all over. I was told that I had quite a few broken bones and my face required more than a dozen stitches. I felt so tired that I couldn't stay awake for more than a couple of hours at a time. Eating and drinking were out of the question because I had a fractured jaw; I was basically fed through tubes until my jaws healed enough for liquid food.

As for my eyes, I couldn't open them until a few weeks later when they took the bandages off of my eyes; that was when I found out what happened to them. I could feel the warmth of the light on my face, but my eyes registered nothing but pain.

The world stayed the same ever after. Even light passing through my eyelids caused aching in the sockets; I had to wear eye masks for the first couple of years. The doctors devised treatment plans and I went under surgery a couple of times, but because the optical nerves connecting my eyes to my brain had been damaged, I still couldn't see. The aching, though, gradually faded away, but I still had to keep my eyelids shut.

Dad was beside me every step of the way. He and Mom had me when he was still in police school. I didn't remember much of what happened between when I was born and the accident, but I remembered how he looked. He was a giant man compared to the little me. He had a handsome head of black hair and an angular, masculine face. His hands were similarly large and rough; he often used his callused fingers to tickle me when I felt down. He didn't speak much before the accident, but he grew much more talkative after.

That was the only way he could communicate to me, after all.

We couldn't afford a dedicated single-patient room; I was moved into a room with four beds with other kids. He would have moved into the hospital literally if I were in such a room. Thanks to that, I made quite a few friends who came and went, and they still came to me for visits from time to time. I, too, was in and out of the hospital mainly for surgeries and recovery from it; I liked that place, especially with Auntie Cecile and the other kids around.

I didn't go to school; school for the disabled were too expensive for us, and Dad was concerned about the quality of education for a blind little girl like me in a public school. But he couldn't be by my side all the time, so I asked him to teach me Braille. He would bring me stacks of books in Braille after, and I would finish them as quickly as I could, going through more than a dozen in a week. It wasn't until much later that I understood how few Braille books there were in libraries and for sale; only then did I know how much time he spent on getting me books like those.

A couple of days before that, he came home late at night as usual. There was something different about it, though. I could tell that he was excited because the footsteps and the way he closed the front door made different sounds.

"Welcome home, Dad," I walked out of my room with my walking stick in hand. The lights in the room were off; he kept it that way so that my eyes wouldn't hurt. He picked me up and gave me a hug with his strong, warm arms, as usual. His uniform smelled like tobacco, though: "Did you smoke again?"

"I was in a place where other people smoked, honey…" He had a smile in his voice. I simply pursed my lips together and growled a little; that was enough to make him confess: "Okay… just one…"

"Smoking is bad for you, Dad," I emphasized.

"I know, sweetie, I'm sorry," he put me down and placed the walking stick in my hand. "How are you today? Were you lonely?"

"I finished 'Anne of Green Gables' today!" The book, the first of many, was riveting to me. "Dad, do I have freckles?"

"What? No! You're beautiful, honey!" He was a little surprised. "What made you ask that?"

"Anne had freckles. She also had a head of red hair and lived on a farm!" I dreamed about being Anne. A wide open space of green with cows and sheep and birds and horses was something that I had never seen before. I wanted to ride on the back of a horse, too, and feel the wind in my hair. "I wonder if I had freckles."

I had quite the active imagination back then.

"Yes, she did," Dad's voice nodded at me. "Honey, I have something important to tell you. Are you hungry at all?"

"A little bit." My belly rumbled.

"Okay. Let's have some food. What do you want?"

"Pizza!"

"We had pizza yesterday. Are you sure you still want to have it?"

"Yeah, I'm fine with it." He was never too good at cooking, and budget was tight. So we had pizza, baked from a frozen one in the fridge. He tried to stockpile different frozen foods to provide some variety to my diet. And of course, there was a side of vegetable salad to it as well.

"So, um, Dad… what did you want to tell me?" I finished the last bite of the salad.

"How's the salad, honey?" He stopped chewing and gave me a question of his own.

"It's good." I didn't want to tell him that the lettuce was soft or that the tomatoes were too sour. "But, didn't you have something important you want to say?"

He was silent for a while. It wasn't because he was eating; I could hear people chew even if they were trying their best not to be noisy. His breathing got a bit heavy, too. Finally, it was after a last heavy exhale that he spoke again: "You might have to spend a few more days in the hospital, honey."

"Did you schedule another operation, Dad?"

"No," he answered to my surprise. More silence followed. "There was something I want to try. Something Uncle Guy mentioned."

"What is it, Dad? Is it an experimental procedure? Is it going to cost a lot of money?" I was puzzled. He never mentioned anything like that to me. We had tried plenty of things before with several different doctors. He wouldn't say anything to me, but he would have a lot of overtime for a long while after each one.

"No, honey," he smiled. Usually with a pretense like this, I could hear him lying, but this time it sounded different. "Not at all."

"Did you talk to Dr. Chevinsky about it?" The Doctor was the one responsible for my case at Auntie Cecile's hospital. He had a big, fluffy chin of beard that he loved to rub in my face. It felt like a brush of soft hair, so I didn't exactly mind.

"Not yet. I will talk to him tomorrow," he reached across the dinner table and patted me on the head. His hand felt warm to the touch. "You'll know in a couple of days what it is."

"Okay," I nodded, putting the last bit of pizza in my mouth. Dad wanted it to be a surprise, so I couldn't bring myself to ruin it for him. Besides, I was looking forward to it a little; what new friends would I get to make?

* * *

><p>Dad drove me to the hospital in the morning. The familiar scent of soap and disinfectant was strangely calming. He insisted on carrying me in his arms again even though I was already 12 years old and could walk by myself with my walking stick. It was like a ritual for him every time I got into and out of the hospital.<p>

I secretly wondered what he would do when I grow to 18 years old. Would he still be able to carry me in his arms?

"There's a 17-hour time difference between Japanese Standard and PST. I'll be sticking around with a nurse to monitor their situation. What about Dr. Chen? I'd very much like it if he could stay with us as well." We were led to the inpatient wing. I picked out Dr. Chevinsky's voice from the buzz of ambient conversation. It wasn't that hard to isolate; he had this strange Russian accent and his voice felt like low-grit sandpaper scraping against my ears.

"Here they are, Doctor." This one was a nurse that I didn't recognize. Was she a new nurse at the hospital?

"There you are. Hi there, Serenity! How are you?" The big-bearded doctor leaned in and gave my cheeks a kiss.

"I'm doing fine, Dr. Chevinsky!" I replied him with a big smile.

"We've got everything ready for you, Arios," he said. The door to our room clicked open.

"Thanks, Doc. Are you comfortable? Do you need softer bedding?" Dad said as I was laid on top of a bed by the window; I could feel the sun shining on my face.

"Yeah," I nodded. The bed sheets smelled like bleach. "I'm okay, Dad."

"Arios, can I have a moment?" The Doctor beckoned.

"Serenity, some nurses will change your outfit and hook some machines up so that they could see what you're doing. Be a good girl and wait for Daddy to come back, okay?" He planted a kiss on my forehead.

I reached out to him and wrapped my arms around his neck. His muscles tensed as I kissed him on the cheeks; he wasn't expecting this in the least: "Okay, Dad. I'll be good."

I had a sense that he didn't know how to respond to that, but he did pat me on my head before he left. There was frantic activity for a while; nurses came and went, dressing me up in comfortable cotton pajamas smelling equally like the bleach they used for the bed sheets. They put some sensors and sticky pads on my skin for the machines they rolled into the room, as well. All of it was standard procedure for a patient who was going to be closely monitored.

I didn't move much except when told to. Instead, I focused my ears toward the exit of the room, trying my best to listen to the conversation between my Dad and Dr. Chevinsky, which was but a faint whisper through what I assumed to be closed doors.

"Arios, you know as much as I do that this is just wild-mass guessing. You can't possibly expect a game to help in any manner."

"I know, Doc. But she didn't lose her eyesight because of brain damage. If the helmet works the way I think it does, she'll be able to see inside the game."

"I've been reading up on the helmet. I still don't trust it."

"But there are analogous medical devices on limited human trials in Japan right now."

"Yes, yes, the Medicubloid prototype. It's a big box in a clean room; it'll never reach full-scale use. Even if the machines functioned the same way in principle, we have no idea if it'll have side effects and what those will be. This is a big risk you're taking with your daughter."

"I… I know. We've tried so many things in the past. I don't want to have her stay like that for the rest of her life."

"I understand, and I want the best for her, too. That's why I'm paying for this stay out of my own pockets."

"You… you'd do that, Doctor?"

"It's not like I'm doing this just for charity. If this works, I can write a paper about it. Then we'll get funding to build on top of this tech for a pair of goggles that would actually give her vision without immersing her in VR. It's a rather blatant way of putting it, but in the end I'll get fame, and your daughter gets her eyes back."

"Thank you, Doc. You don't know how much this means for me."

"Yeah. You're going with her into the game, right? Thank me after we confirm it works."

"I know. I'll be sure to tell you what I saw."

The door creaked again after the last nurse tucked me in bed. Dad and the Doctor walked to the side of my bed, and Dad touched my face with his callused hands: "Honey, we're going to put a helmet on you. This 'Nerve Gear' will allow you to experience what they called a 'virtual reality'. I'm hoping that you could see things in there."

"Dad," I swallowed. Somehow my throat had become dry. "You didn't have to do this for me."

"No, sweetie pie, I wanted to do this for you" was his response as he stroked my hair. "The service starts at around 8PM tonight. I'll get you some books from the car to pass the time."

"Will you be with me in there?"

There was a smile and a soft sigh: "Yeah. I'll be right there with you."

* * *

><p>Time passed by in a blur. The hospital prepared great food for the two of us. I ate up, knowing that it would be some time before I would emerge from this "Zemuria Online" game. I—and the doctors—expected the two of us to be inside the game for a couple of hours; nothing really prepared me for how long we ended up being there.<p>

Sadly, they never printed the game's manual in Braille, but Dad read to me the introductions to the game. It drove my imagination wild. A world with swords, guns and magic. A world where I could freely roam and go on adventures as if I was actually there. A world where players from all over the globe would congregate in many different nations and city states, carving out their own path in this fantastical setting.

Of course, the most enticing aspect was to be able to see again. It was but a possibility when they put the helmet on me along with different sensors for medical equipment, but it was a possibility that I had to explore.

"Link, start!" I almost yelled as the nurse told me it was time. The Helmet clicked a little, and then colors flashed in front of my eyes. There was a white background. Colored spheres dotted it, and then they seemed to move past me at such a high speed that they turned into colored lines.

I didn't know what to call the colors. I knew my hair was not "red" like Anne's and that it was a head of "silky black hair" like my father described, but I had no concept of what they referred to because I had no memory of seeing them. I couldn't tell the colors apart until later, when Dad started teaching me about what they were called.

"Welcome to Zemuria Online! Please choose a username." a pleasant female voice said in a pre-recorded message. A keyboard appeared in front of me. I didn't know at the time, but there were English letters arranged like a regular keyboard.

"Um, excuse me," I said tentatively, uncertain how to address the system or in fact how to even request it. I had never typed in my life, nor did I ever seen the letters: "If it's not too much trouble, could I please have something in Braille?"

"Interpreting query. Relevant data found. Request for Braille keyboard acknowledged. Tactile keyboard surface simulated." This voice was much more synthetic. Instead of suspending in front of me, the keyboard slanted backwards until it looked as if it were resting on a table. I tentatively reached out to feel the keys; the familiar touch of raised dots returned to me, and all of a sudden I could comprehend what was written on the keys.

The system was intelligent enough to give me a Braille keyboard!

I didn't know why I was ecstatic over that. Maybe it was because I hadn't seen anything more interesting than that keyboard and the line of words in front of me, or maybe it was because that Argus designed the system so that it could respond to my requests in such a perfect manner.

My fingers looked for the right letters. The blinking vertical bars moved as I pressed each button with some force, and "Serenity" was displayed in the big white box.

So that was how the word looked like in a person's eyes!

"Thank you. Your username has been registered," the pre-recorded message returned as the textbox was replaced with a green circle with a white checkmark. Then, a mirror appeared in front of me, reflecting my appearance inside the game.

"Parameters from the initial scan of your body have been applied to your avatar. It may not reflect your actual appearance," the message continued. I didn't really remember what I looked like; it was a long time ago since I last saw myself in a mirror.

But I had to say, the image inside the mirror looked good. I was about 4 and a half feet tall. I was a little bit chubby, but not by much; I didn't really get a lot of chances to exercise after all. I had a head of black hair like Dad did; it drape down my back past my shoulder. I was wearing a white dress with long white sleeves, and a pair of white shoes. It didn't look half bad on me.

And my eyes. My eyes were a sparkling black. I hadn't seen them in a long time.

"Please customize your appearances." With that message, objects—circular, square, and bars with little circular bits on top—popped up on the mirror to the side.

"Please reach out and touch the buttons and knobs to customize your appearances." The message expanded on what it wanted me to do after I stood there for a few seconds unsure of the next step. I reached out with my hands to touch the options, and my avatar in the mirror shifted and changed according to my choices. I could see every little bit of change I made by twisting the knobs and tapping the buttons. After I was done, I was a bit slimmer, a bit taller, and I was wearing a pink flowery dress with white socks and laced boots.

"Are you sure you want to finalize your appearance? You can change your hairstyle and clothing in game, but your facial structures will be permanent, and your body shape will be correlated with your statistics in game." The message warned with a popup box in front of me. There were two buttons; one had a checkmark and both Braille and letters for "yes", while the other had a red cross mark with both Braille and letters for "no".

I pressed the "yes" button.

"Thank you. You will now be sent into the game world. On behalf of Argus, we once again welcome you to Zemuria Online, and we sincerely hope you enjoy your stay here." The world darkened. The next moment. I was standing on cobblestone-paved ground near the giant bell in Crossbell's Central Square.

It was amazing. I remember having my mouth gape open as I turned around. The grass around the bell was green. The flowers were blooming in a dozen different colors. I dashed toward the bell and squatted down in front of the short trench of flowers, and then I reached out to touch the petals.

It felt almost exactly like how the petals felt when Jessie's parents brought flowers for me. It smelled of the same sweet smell, too.

"Serenity?" I turned around when a male voice called out my name, and almost immediately I knew that he was my dad. He looked just as tall and strong as I imagined, and he also had a head of flowing black hair and steely black eyes.

"Dad?" I answered tentatively, standing up and reaching out to him.

"Hi, honey. How are you doing?"

It was him. It really was him! It was…

"You're so tall… and your shoulders are so broad…" My voice was quiet as a whisper. "And your arms… and hands… I never knew…"

There was no need for more words. His face was twitching, his lips pursed tight. I reached out to him with my hand. He took it and immediately pulled me into an embrace at the same time he fell to kneeling, his face snuggling close to mine. He was trying his hardest not to cry in front of me; he was sniffling, and his breaths were heavy and moist.

"Dad, do I… do I look like this outside the game?" I wrapped my arms around him, as well. This was the first time I saw him cry, and I knew it wasn't because he was sad even then.

"Yes, sweetie… you are just as beautiful outside the game as you do here," he breathed a laugh, followed by a tear-stained inhale. "I… I can't believe this worked… I…"

My hands reached up and touched his hair. Then, like he would often do to me, I patted the back of his head lightly: "Thank you, Dad… for going to such lengths to…"

There was some warm liquid rolling down his face and onto my shoulder.

"I need to thank Dr. Chevinsky, too…" I remembered the little conversation they had outside my room. "And Uncle Guy… and I have to write to Jessie and…"

"We'll have time for all of that later," he took a long sniffle and smiled. "For now, why don't we enjoy this time? Let's explore this Crossbell city!"

And so I did. I had read about a lot of things, but I never knew what they looked like. I never knew that clothing—even outdated ones—could be so colorful and have so many styles. I never knew that birds looked so pretty. I never knew that buildings were so large, or that the sky was so blue, or that the rainbow was so colorful, or that the neon signs were so mesmerizing, or…

I hadn't realized how much I missed outside the game until, for the first time since I could remember, I saw that virtual world with my own eyes.

We finally came to a stop back in the Central Square in front of the ice-cream cart. I remember almost plastering my face over the glass display case of the cart, looking at ice cream in various colors with widened eyes.

"Do you want some ice cream, honey?" Dad said. He hadn't really stopped smiling during the couple of hours since we met up in the virtual world.

"I didn't know they looked so... smooth?" I struggled to find a word to describe the texture. I—to be exact, my fingers—knew what the word "smooth" meant, but it was a foreign concept for my eyes still. Then, I pointed to the little bin with brownish solid in it: "What's that flavor?"

"That's 'chocolate', honey," he read out the word to me. "How about I teach you the alphabet tomorrow? It's probably not that hard for you because you already knew how to read things in Braille."

"But don't you have work tomorrow?" I glanced up at the clock to the upper right. And then I realized that I hadn't really seen Arabic numbers either: "I… Do you know what time it is, Dad?"

"It's okay, sweetie, I'll just extend my vacation to be in here," he glanced up at his own HUD. "It's past 1 AM already. Are you sleepy?"

"Not really!" I wasn't sleepy at all even though this was the first time in a long while that I had stayed up so late. "Can we stay in here for a while longer?"

"Well, okay. But we'll need to log out soon; Dr. Chevinsky is still waiting for us outside, remember?"

"Oh, right. I have to properly thank him!" It was late at night. We had spent more than five hours immersed in this virtual reality.

"Yeah. We both do—huh?"

Azure light wrapped around both of us as circles of power appeared under our feet.

That was when it all began.


	6. Leafa: First Day

_Editor's Note: In the interest of privacy protection, real names were replaced with in-game names where appropriate._

I knew initially about the Incident on television at the time. I knew my brother was super into these games. Sometimes I worried about him not having any friends at school because he was always talking about these "Virtual Reality MMO" and how they were going to be "the next big thing". It was one of the marks of a social outcast, and I certainly did not want him to grow up into one of those "hikkikomori" men.

I knew the day that Zemuria Online would officially start its online service almost by heart. Brother had been talking about it for days; weeks, even. Two years before that, he attended the closed beta for the game. I barely saw him at all that month except at the dinner table.

That is not to say I did not see him much more before the game surrounded him with its evil allures. He quit kendo practice two years after we trained in the same dojo under our grandfather. I was, I think, barely nine years old by then. I was too young to truly understand the reason why he would just suddenly turn away from the training. He was talented, skilled, and paid even more attention to the lessons than I did.

But all of a sudden he quit, and he never told me himself the reason he did that. Grandpa was furious. I couldn't stop him from hitting my brother with that shinai. I tried, believe me; but what was a little girl supposed to do when the kendo master of the family—the man that I looked up to for my entire life—was savagely beating my kind, gentle, and always so bright and uplifting brother?

At the time, there was little doubt to me the reason he became withdrawn from everyone afterwards. It was only natural, because he was covered in bruises and his lips were bleeding after Grandpa finished beating him. Without knowing the truth, I blamed myself for what happened to him; I thought he was mad at me for not standing up to Grandpa. I thought Grandpa wouldn't harass him if I put in his share of work at the dojo. It worked to an extent: Grandpa never hit him again, though every time they met (which was a rare occurrence at best) he abused my brother with harsh words.

It was in that same spirit that I went to the kendo club at school that day during the winter break. The national championship was coming up. I reached the quarterfinals the last time I attended. Grandpa was largely neutral about that when I told him the news, but I could tell he was secretly a little proud because he didn't bother Brother much when they met that week. If I could get a better rank this time, I may be able to get Grandpa to avoid causing grief to him all together for the next little while.

At least, that was what I thought when I was on my way to the club. It was also in the back of my head somewhere while I practiced there, and it was there when I finished the grocery shopping Mom asked me to do on my way back. She said she was going to interview my brother on how the full-version game looked and felt after he logged off, so she had permission to work at home for the day. In any case, it was a rare event, so I was a bit more enthusiastic about the shopping.

It was 5:30 in the afternoon. I remember that time very clearly. I had just come home with my shinai on my shoulder and a bag of groceries in hand: potatoes, carrots, celery, green onions, actual onions and a tray of beef. We were having beef curry that night. It was a comfort food with plenty of calories, something he loved because that meant he would not be hungry for a long time after dinner. I dropped off the groceries at the kitchen counter. The house was a little cramped for four people to live in, but Dad was never home and Mom only rarely home so it seemed a bit more spacious when it was just the two of us. When Mom wanted my help peeling potatoes, I took the peeler and a couple of bowls to the living room and turned on the TV.

"We bring you breaking news from our technology correspondent," the newscaster said. At the time, I thought they were overreacting. It was the launch of the most anticipated video game in history. So what? It did not deserve more coverage than say the crisis in the Middle East or another plague outbreak in Africa.

Then again, it was the first-world media we were talking about, I thought as I started peeling the potato.

But then, the scene on the TV changed and so did the tone: "I am standing outside Argus headquarters along with press from around the world. We are waiting for an official announcement from the company. Information we've obtained from private channels indicates that there has been some sort of deliberate sabotage in the Zemuria Online software that disabled players from logging out successfully."

I remember my hands stop moving as I stared at the TV screen. I could tell that Mom was doing the same, because the steady tap of her kitchen knife against the chopping board had stopped as well. Brother was in Zemuria Online. He had to be; he was hyped about this for years! There was no way that this situation could not affect him.

I had the urge of charging upstairs, barging into his room and rip that helmet off of his head to force him to log out. Somehow reason overruled emotion in the heat of the moment, and I was thankful for that: I remembered that he had told us not to do that unless it was absolutely necessary because Argus did not promise that the Nerve Gear helmet would be completely safe to remove unless the player inside had logged out of the system. So I decided to remain in my seat even though the soft cushion under my bum felt like a wooden board full of nails.

And I listened.

"A senior official inside the company who declined to be named had informed us that an employee had willfully sabotaged the system on the server side at the last minute. He had disabled the function for players to log out, thereby trapping every player inside the game. From the information we've obtained, said employee had also tampered with the Nerve Gear firmware so that it would emit a lethal burst of microwave radiation to destroy the player's brain, should the player's avatar die within Zemuria Online. Attempts to remove or disconnect the helmet in any way would result in the same behavior from the helmet as a fail-deadly measure."

"What are the possible consequences that would result from this modification?"

I already knew what consequences there would be. I saw Brother play Zemuria Online beta a couple of times. That was because I barged into his room to call him down to dinner without remembering that he was in the game. Every time his posture was the same: lying on the bed, hands by his side, helmet on his head. Without the helmet, one would think that he was sleeping; but on approach I could see his eyes moving as if he was dreaming.

If it were a dream, it would have been a nightmare by then. Humans—biological organisms in general—needed to ingest nutrients and eliminate waste. I was taught that in biology class. For Brother who was very much in a coma, he would be capable of doing neither by himself. What was fortunate was that he had both my mother and me to take care of him; I shuddered when I thought about the possible fate of the players who lived alone.

"…the government doing to address the situation?"

"Well, I can tell you that Argus had provided a list of registered players to governments of affected countries. For now, the Prime Minister had said that emergency services will be dispatched to the addresses of all the players and move them to hospitals around the country as per instructions from the perpetrator. At the same time, the police and military intelligence will begin a formal investigation into Kayaba Akihiko, the self-confessed perpetrator of this incident."

Kayaba Akihiko.

That was a man Brother revered as if he were a god. For all I knew, the other players of the game held similar sentiments. After all, who else would line up in front of a game store for more than 24 hours straight to purchase a game?

Instead of rewarding his faithful worshippers with what they sought, that evil man had betrayed them all by making them victims of his twisted scheme.

"…They will conduct a world-wide search for the suspect in collaboration with police forces from the US, the UK, Germany, France, China, South Korea, India, Russia, and Brazil. We are told that details on the manhunt will be forthcoming…"

Sirens were outside my house and they were coming closer by the second. Hate for Kayaba aside, I knew what I needed to do. The half-peeled potato lay inside the bowl of potato skin as I bolted up from my chair. Paramedics with a large stretcher and some portable electronics equipment barged into my room.

"Is this Kirito's home?" They asked.

"Yes," I answered in as calm a voice as I could. The ambulance parked outside was blinking red and blue lights, but thankfully the soul-rending noises of the sirens had stopped.

"Do you know about the incident regarding Zemuria—" I knew the man in front of me dressed in an orange bodysuit and wearing a safety helmet was just doing his job. "Dumb question; you had your TV on. Where is he?"

"He's upstairs. Follow me, please," I rushed up the stairs. I could hear the heavy thuds of the footsteps behind me. They were in sync with my heart. Brother's room was not locked. The men went in after me and two of them were immediately at work disconnecting the helmet from the computer.

"What are you doing!? You're going to kill him! STOP!" I tried to tackle the guy from behind but two of them held me back. I almost reached the shinai he kept at the corner of his room. It was a good thing I did not, because I would have knocked them all out and probably killed my brother.

"We had instructions from the perpetrator that we'll follow to keep him alive while transporting him to the hospital," they said, but it all sounded as indistinct as the words they used to talk to each other. "We need to move him to life support and monitoring there. Please!"

"Leafa!" Mom called out my name at the door. Her face said everything I needed to know. I slumped on the floor when the two paramedics let me go. They connected his helmet to a portable battery and something like a portable 3G modem before carrying him onto the stretcher.

"We'll drive you to the hospital as well," the last paramedic out of the room said to us. At least, that was what I thought I heard; it all sounded quite muffled from my end at the time. Mom's nod was mechanical; she took a similarly stiff step into the room and patted me on the head.

I remember getting up through pure reflex. Her hand in mine was cold as ice and hard as steel. I remember almost stumbling when I walked down the stairs; the paramedic caught me so that I did not fall onto my face. We were stuffed into the back of the ambulance like sardines into a can before its sirens started screaming again.

It was then that I realized.

Nothing's ever going to be the same.


	7. Kirito: How I Met My Fiancee

Liberl was a rather small kingdom, but it was by no means crowded with the addition of ten thousand players. After all, it required an entire datacenter to perform all of its calculations, and two more for geo-replication and disaster recovery. I, at least, was thankful that Argus spared no expense in ensuring that the entire game would be served at 99.999% availability. Short of the actual Apocalypse, I could rest assured that my own existence would be online at all times.

The nation had five major settlements, of which Rolent was one. It was a rural city—no, a township may be the best descriptive term. The surrounding region was also creatively named the Region of Rolent. It was a pleasant European-style town constructed much in the style of early Renaissance, except that it had a functional sewage system, tap water, and of course the network that provided Orbal power to every home much like electricity in modern society. Cobblestone was applied liberally on the winding roads, alleys and even the Town Square where the Rolent Clock Tower resided. The tower itself was built out of bricks of chiseled limestone meticulously stacked together and glued into a pillar with mortar. The town's Orbal clock situated at the top of the tower tolled ponderously every half hour.

Surrounding the central square was a plethora of small stores. It was but a month after the incident, but players had picked up on the need to make money to survive. Zemuria Online was designed to accommodate various skills and professions, both combat and non-combat related. There were the regular ice cream stalls, sandwich stands and crepe carts. Less regular were the small shops that occupied half an available lot, ranging from clothing stores to custom blacksmith shops to even barber shops, though that last one was most likely run by the NPC in case someone wants to change their hairstyle.

I liked the region. The town itself was simple, and not in a bad way: the people who chose to stay there were straightforward, and that made for a culture untainted with the bad bits of modern life. Settlements with a focus on farming and mining tended to produce something like that. Bose had its merchants fight it out by juggling the prices on the markets like competing clowns in a circus. Ruan had the divide between the fishing industry, the port industry, and the tourism industry. Zeiss had a complex relationship with the Central Factory, which in turn was tangled in a complex web of interests and intrigues with local workshops, not to mention the "frenemy" status they shared with the Ulm Corporation in the Republic and the Reinford Group in the Empire. And the capital Grancel was just a bottomless pit of vitriol once the players got involved with politics.

I suppose if Kayaba Akihiko wished to prove that humans could not escape the social framework imposed on them, he would have had a strong case in Liberl. That was, perhaps surprisingly, not one of his goals. But I digress; we were talking about how I met Asuna for the first time.

Back then I was relying on my experience as a beta tester. Other beta testers—many who would become fellow Bracers later—were doing the same thing. Understandably that caused a little tension between players. Well, "a little" may be somewhat of an understatement, because in an MMO nothing is more infuriating than arriving at a levelling spot and finding that the entire area was picked clean of monsters.

Consequently, the field south of Rolent around the farmland was safe to travel unarmed for quite a while, but I had then moved on to the Mistwald Forest to the east of these fields. It was a legitimate forest with plenty of old growth; trees in there—both deciduous and coniferous—could grow to be hundreds of feet tall and dozens of feet in diameter. The treetops obscured so much sunlight that the undergrowth was shrouded in perpetual twilight. As a result, the ground was somewhat clean of vegetation, though that made little difference in terms of visibility. A thin layer of mist or fog lingered around ground level even under the midday sun.

The forest was the apparent source of 70 percent of Liberl's lumber. It was also home to many dangerous monsters, not the least of which were killer wasps the size of an adolescent boy. These insidious insects nestled close to the treetop and swooped down to hunt animals and weaker monsters with their venomous stingers. With one good sting, the venom could paralyze an animal as big as a cow. They would then carry the helpless prey up into their nest and…

I honestly did not know how lumberjacks could even cut down trees in the area with such potent threats roaming around. The wasps made for poor targets for people who used melee weapons such as swords; they flew and lunged too quickly for most people to respond with their reflexes. Even for firearm users such as soldiers in the Army, they were still challenging targets to acquire and eliminate. Consequently, players rarely came to the forest. Nobody wanted to die so early into the game, after all.

I fought these wasps during my time as a beta tester. They were difficult, even for me, but they were not at all impossible to defeat with my reflexes. The key to killing them was to lure their AI into thinking that charging me was a good idea; once they entered their charge, I could sidestep and cut them in half at their abdomen. For all their agility, they were not durable creatures, so that killed them rather quickly.

I was making progress. These creatures had a high rate of dropping Monster Wings, which was needed for a quest back in Rolent. The quest paid around 2000 Mira, enough for about a week's food and lodging in Hotel Rolent, but I was planning to use it toward my next weapon. I had to be careful not to engage too many at a time or do something stupid like stirring up an entire nest, because a sting for me meant death seeing how I had no backups to bring me out of paralysis.

I sidestepped a wasp's lunge, luring it into stabbing its stinger into the tree behind me. The stingers had serrated hooks on them, preventing it from pulling out of the dense wood quickly. Using the opportunity, I spun around toward its companion wasp. My sword bit into the joint between its thorax and abdomen and cut it in half. It exploded in mid-air into a billion pieces of bright polygon with the sound of shattered glass. At the same time, the loot window popped up, showing me that I had obtained another Monster Wing. Swinging my sword clean of ichor from the slain wasp, I turned to the other one and beheaded it with one cut. Unfortunately, it did not drop the last item I needed to complete the quest, but I was in no rush.

If I had a group with me, we could take on bigger clusters of these wasps and level even faster. With a soft sigh, I swiped open the menu and checked my friend's list. My brows furrowed when I saw the greyed-out scrollbar and the two blinking entries on it. After we parted ways, Klein had gone and created a guild called "Fuurinkazan", or "Wind, Wood, Fire, and Mountain". He was then inside the Malga Mountains with his guild mates, challenging tougher monsters than Poms and slimes around Rolent, though his level was nowhere close to mine.

Argo, on the other hand, was making her way up the ladder of Liberl News Service. A reporter's job would suit her, I mused with a small smile. Besides, a journalist's credentials would give her permission to roam and investigate as she pleased, a tool critical for an information broker. At the moment she had ventured out to the Bose region, so she was again unreachable for now.

I closed the friend's list with a disappointed shake of my head. Even if I called for them and they answered, they would not be available for quite some time. I took a glance at the clock on the interface and it showed "17:27", solidifying the notion that they wouldn't be able to make it here today unless they knew how to teleport. People tended to lose track of time when they were inside Mistwald.

I swiped on the menu and picked out the map. It expanded into a blue-colored 2-dimensional projection in front of me, showing my current position as a green blinking dot and my orientation with a small arrow. The compass direction was on the top right, its red arrow pointing perpendicular at the top edge defiantly. I was about a kilometer into the forest. Making my way back on foot would take a good twenty minutes to half an hour without respawns blocking my way, and I intended to be back in town by nightfall.

I scanned the map. The quickest route back onto the main road would be to follow the vein-like path that snaked into the forest before disappearing into the grey unexplored areas. Closing the map with a flick of my hand, I stretched my arms out and flexed them to get my joints back in working order before setting foot on the path in front of me.

Without a map or a compass, people would get lost easily inside the forest. That might be the source of the "lost in the woods" requests the Bracer's Guild put out for players to find NPCs. Fortunately, I had both, and respawns were not an issue. Perhaps Akihiko deliberately lengthened the respawn time to make sure a player would not camp around a leveling spot for too long, but that design decision led to even more frustration from the regular players.

I was about halfway through my journey before I heard the sound of grunts and a familiar buzzing. I paused for a moment and listened: those grunts of exertion could only come from a single person. It was strange, because during my stay inside the forest—about six to seven hours from start to finish—I never encountered another player. I did not think that anyone else would even dare venture into the forest alone, but apparently this person had just proven me wrong.

I was genuinely curious, so I decided to take a detour into the woods again and take a look at who this brave soul was. Even as I walked, possibilities popped up in my mind. Maybe it could be someone I knew from beta testing; I'd seen some pretty hardcore gamers there. It could also be someone who was lost and was then struggling against the wasps; I could probably get some reward like a free meal for helping them out.

Neither of those greeted me when I got there. You probably have guessed who it was. She was not fashionable by a long shot back then. The system would attempt to adapt the appearance of equipped items to make sure that they did not look too ridiculous. A good example would be the case of wearing a giant black long-coat normally associated with Russian soldiers along with a pair of pink flip-flops seen mostly on the Australian beach: the system would change the appearance of the flip-flops into something like a small pair of boots. She was wearing a flaxen hooded cloak, a pair of sneakers, and some gaudy colors underneath. By gaudy, I meant neon pink and lime green; there was only so much that the system could do. In her hand was a steel-grey rapier of simple design; probably the cheapest rapier in the weapons shop, I reckoned.

The appearance was not the one that took my attention, though; it was the speed and the grace with which she dispatched a trio of wasps. I should say at this point that three wasps was about the maximum number a solo player at level parity could handle. Even I had to be mindful of all their positions at a given time to defend against potential surprise attacks, and that was no easy task given how fast they were.

Asuna made it look almost trivial. If this were the real world, I would have assumed that she either had lessons in ballet dancing or was a gymnast. The way she sidestepped that wasp's charge was simply magical. It was fluid and natural, and she was then able to follow up with a precise stab to its thorax to boot. Her subsequent spin caused a second wasp to stop abruptly in its charge before she lunged and speared it in its head through the activation of a Craft. The last wasp had its wings halved when she swung her rapier around as it approached her from the back. The initial swing missed, but the tip of the rapier sliced through the wings on the follow-up vertical swing downwards. Lying on the ground helpless, it had no choice but to have its head crushed under her foot.

"Nicely done." To this day, I don't know what made me say that while applauding her at the same time. She heaved a small sigh and turned around; the hood obscured her face so that I could not see it clearly.

"Who are you?" Her voice was like the chimes of a crystal. In fact, it was so clear that the hostility could not be any more apparent.

"The name's Kirito," I put up a calm face and smiled in the face of her snarl. This was a lady, and a pissed-off lady at that. I learned—don't ask me how—that women generally don't like peeping toms. I suppose that I was peeping on her, though in my defense it was more of a "silent observation" than anything else. I thought better than make up excuses instead of telling the truth: "I didn't know anyone else would be training here, so I thought I'd drop by and say hi."

Her body relaxed, but only slightly. She swung her rapier to shake most of the insect ichor off of it before sheathing it in a scabbard dangling off of her waist. "Is that all?"

"Why don't we party up? It's not like there's anything to lose, and there's the added insurance of having someone to watch each other's backs," I suggested. Now that I thought about it, I was a bit audacious back then, asking a lady whom I just met for the first time to join my party. Not to mention, that lady was a little miffed at my, uh, "silent observation".

"I'm fine by myself, thanks." And I was shot down. It was to be expected, really.

"You know, it's kind of late now. If we don't head out soon, it's going to be dark by the time we get out," I said quickly when she turned around to head deeper into the forest. I didn't want to give up.

"What does it matter?" She snapped, her brows furrowing into a knot. "I can take care of myself—"

It was a growl that interrupted her. No, a grumble, really, and I immediately recognized what it was, because it was not my stomach that was rumbling. And yes, Kayaba Akihiko really did put that functionality into the game when an avatar's hunger meter dropped down to a certain level. Sometimes I wondered if he was a bit too obsessed with making the game resemble real life as much as possible.

"You… should probably refill your hunger meter." I tried to make my smile as innocent as possible.

She stopped after a single step before turning around, her embarrassed blush extended down to the base of her neck: "Y-Yeah, that's… probably a good idea."

* * *

><p>There wasn't much to say about our little hike back to Rolent. Things were smooth even though at the very end we saw a couple of respawned packs. There were two of us then, and both of us were used to fighting the monsters, so the fights felt less like life-threatening engagements and more like warm-up exercises before dinner.<p>

We barely talked on the way. She was always a step behind me, far enough that she was out of my arms' reach but close enough for her rapier to stab me in case I got any funny ideas. A bit too defensive, I thought, but she was of course correct to be cautious. I was, after all, a guy out of nowhere that offered to take her to dinner.

She might not have known at the time, but Kayaba really did put that functionality in the game along with mechanisms to protect players from unwanted attention in that department. I doubted it was his own idea, though, seeing how the gaming media portrayed him. Then again, a certain rule of the internet dictated that any new technology would inevitably be used for that purpose, so I wasn't really surprised.

The Abend Bar was the only NPC-owned restaurant in the town. It was a little past six in the evening when we got back; we were seated almost half an hour later. It was a quiet little shop normally, though the number of patrons had a great deal to do with the atmosphere. The owner of the shop—or rather, Kayaba—wanted it to have a rural feel to it. To that end, it was furnished with completely wooden furniture; ears of corn and strings of chili peppers hung around the corner beside the Orbal lights on the walls and the ceiling that shone with warm yellow light. Small paintings adorned the walls around the restaurant, mostly of farms and orchards.

Food there was kind of expensive for what it was: a plate of pasta for two cost around 180 Mira, and a large box of fries was a whopping 200 Mira. Still, I was somehow compelled to bring Asuna there, and it wasn't just because I wanted to take a lady somewhere nice. I had been feeding myself nothing but bread and butter for the past few days, so I thought it would be nice to change my palate once in a while for my sanity's sake.

It was not that often that a player would see real beauty inside a video game. Rather, we gamers understood implicitly that appearances inside an MMO simply reflected the commonly held ideals of beauty. After all, players could customize their own appearance with no regard to the laws of physics or biology. For example, a player may be a bespectacled, slightly obese Asian male who women would overlook without batting an eye in real life, but he could be a muscular Caucasian alpha male with a perfect set of pronounced abs wielding an axe larger than his avatar in the game. Going further, he could even be a petite girl with perfect hourglass-shaped body all around with too little volume in her abdomen to contain all her innards, and wield that same axe to devastating effect.

Due to the Mirror of Truth Kayaba gave us on the first day, though, I knew the avatar reflected how Asuna appeared in real life, and she was dazzling. She had pulled back her hood and let her head of long, flowing chestnut hair out into the world. Her face was shaped like an inverted and not-quite-so-long almond, with not a speck of blemish on her marble-colored skin. Her eyes were the brightest of amber, a rather light color for someone of Japanese descent but beautifully placed nonetheless. Her lips were thin and pursed, the color of which was just the right shade of healthy crimson.

Perhaps she was the heiress of a well-known international conglomerate. Or, maybe, she was the descendant of a Caucasian and a Japanese. That kind of appearance was something that people would actively go for in a video game, and she had it in real life. In any case, it was difficult to believe that Asuna would be the type of hardcore gamer that could pull off moves like those I saw in the Forest.

"Um, excuse me." She realized I was staring at her. The gaze she shot my way was not just icy; it had jagged edges and spikes that seemed to dig into me.

"Sorry, didn't mean to stare at you," I blurted out an apology. I couldn't bring myself to say the hundreds of cheesy pickup lines churning in my brain at the moment.

"You look like you've never seen a girl before." She arched an eyebrow at me. I didn't know what went on in her brain at the time, but I was certain that she thought of me as some creepy teenager who was swimming in hormones.

Well, I was a teenager who was swimming in hormones, but that was hardly the point.

"Well, girls aren't exactly common in an online game," I conceded. The number of girls I knew in an online game was above the average of beta testers, but that didn't really mean anything. After all, 1 is still greater than 0, and 1 is not in the definition of "many".

"It's okay. We're just going to share this meal." She stopped my stammering with a simple command. The NPC waitress Elisa walked to our table and dropped off two glasses of herbal soda. Asuna picked up the glass and took a gentle sip.

Silence reigned between us until the entire space between us froze into one giant, oppressing block.

Awkward.

"So, what brought you to Mistwald to kill the wasps? Are you a beta tester?" I tried to break the ice again. I did not recall seeing her in the beta test. Then again, I was told my social circles were a bit smaller than those of a regular person.

"I was there because there was nothing left to kill around the farm or south of Rolent in general," she replied. Short, curt, and giving me no more information than she wanted to give. She was probably taught to be wary of strangers and to be defensive around the opposite sex.

"The stings from the wasp can paralyze a person, so it's rare to see solo players hunt in the forest. I should think most solo players would have moved on to somewhere around Bose or Zeiss by now." The herbal soda tasted surprisingly good. It was a little bitter, but it had the flavor of vanilla and some fruits that I did not recognize in it. Plus the bubbling sensation from the carbonated water was simply refreshing after a hard day at work.

"What does it matter? I'll kill them before they kill me. That's all there is to it." She looked out the window at the bustling streets, eager to end the conversation. She liked the silence more than I did, apparently.

"Well…" I could not argue with her logic. She was skilled with her rapier, and she had natural talent operating an avatar in FullDive, but there was a hint of reckless abandon when she fought. I was not sure what made me think that way, but I was certain I would have liked to spend a couple more days observing her fighting style. I knew for certain I would have hated it if she died so early into the game, so I pushed once more: "Why don't we party up tomorrow? With two people, we can kill these wasps faster and deal with bigger packs."

"With you?" She eyed me suspiciously. It wasn't the idea of partying up with someone that she hated; she instead hated the idea of partying up with me. The revelation hurt.

"It makes sense, right? You know I'm good with a sword," I continued despite the wound as Elisa passed by again and dropped off the big plate of pasta with two sets of cutlery, "and we could watch each other's backs."

She picked up the tongs that came with the food, transferred a significant portion of it to her plate, and started eating. There was only the crisp chatter of utensils and the quiet munches of chewing as we filled our hunger meter. The pasta had fresh tomato sauce and minced meat mixed in along with bits of vegetables. Its taste was good and its texture was just like real al dente pasta, but we both knew that we were not really eating anything. It was another one of those peculiarities that reminded us we were, in fact, in a virtual world.

Are we more than our thoughts?

The sensation of chewing and swallowing brought a certain amount of satisfaction. Even though real food was not consumed, gradually I started feeling full. That was all it was: thoughts and feelings, generated through sensory organs, transmitted through neurons and interpreted by the brain. It was the only way for us humans to experience reality.

That lent some credence to this reality in Zemuria. Certainly, in the back of the head, I knew that all of this—the food, the NPCs, the monsters—all of it was nothing more than an illusion. The small status bar on the top left corner of my vision blatantly reminded me so: integrated HUDs don't exist in the real world. But this illusion felt so real. Klein's surprise on the first day was probably due to his realization of the same thing. The Duck Test would somewhat paradoxically validate this world as another reality. The same test would say that this avatar of me was myself, that there was no meaningful difference between the avatar and my physical body.

"Are you lagging?" A hand waved in front of me. I still had half a plate of pasta to finish, while the cleanliness of her plate told me something about her skills at using a fork. She had to have been trained at using them, I decided.

Yup. Definitely the princess of a wealthy western-style family.

"Oh, sorry, I was just thinking about something." The politeness hammered into me took over while my brain was away in thoughts. I started stuffing myself with the food, temporarily forgetting about proper table manners.

"You're a weird one, you know that?" She sighed.

"I… get that a lot," I swallowed my mouthful of food. By that reasoning, I thought, talking and eating with her avatar in this virtual restaurant was the same as a dinner date with her in reality.

That thought made me eat even faster. In fact, I had to wash the food down with some soda because I swept three quarters of the remaining food in what had to be less than five minutes.

I probably broke a couple of world records during that meal. Too bad there weren't any representatives of those phony record associations in there to record my exploits.

"You could slow down a little bit," she stared at me as I wolfed down the food.

Was that a small smile that crept up her lips?

"Sorry to keep you waiting," I apologized again. What made me do that, I wonder?

She was silent for a minute before she spoke up again: "That plan you spoke of."

"Hmm?" I perked up. She was referring to the plan of us hunting the wasps together in Mistwald.

"I guess it wouldn't hurt to party up," she continued, hiding her face behind the half glass of soda she held up. "That way we can both kill monsters and level up faster."

"Great. I'll grab some bread from the grocery store tomorrow morning and meet you at the southern exit of Rolent at 8." I swiped open the menu and sent her a party invite. I didn't ask where she'd be staying that night; I wasn't going to push my luck that far.

She nodded. Hovering her hand over the dialog box that appeared in front of her, she pressed the "accept" button with some hesitation. A little crown appeared to the right side of my name on the HUD as an indicator that I was then the party leader. Then, her name and status appeared under my own.

Asuna.

That was the first time I even knew her name.

* * *

><p><strong>Appendix A<strong>

**In-Game Name**: Cassius  
><strong>Nickname<strong>: the Sword Saint  
><strong>Level<strong>: 150  
><strong>Orbment Configuration<strong>: 3-3-3 (Enigma), 4-4-2-2 (Arcus)  
><strong>Orbment Affinity<strong>: Wind x2 (Enigma), Wind x2 + Time (Arcus)  
><strong>S-Crafts<strong>: Houou Reppa (鳳凰烈波)  
><strong>Favorite Master Quartz<strong>: Thor, Genesis  
><strong>Weapons<strong>:  
><em>Monohoshizao<em>: Straight-edged Nodachi-Staff, +3500 STR, +30% Chance to critically hit. On Crit: Inflict bleed damage equal to 100% of critical damage over 10 seconds. Unknown make. Attack Types: Slash A, Smash A.  
><strong>Skills<strong>: Two-Handed Sword MAX, Staff MAX, Parry MAX, Awareness MAX, Acrobatics MAX, Squad Command MAX, Tactical Awareness MAX, Strategic View MAX  
><strong>Extra Skills<strong>: Extra Strength MAX  
><strong>Unique Skills<strong>: Hachiyou-Ittou MAX  
><strong>In-Game Affiliation<strong>: Royal Liberl Army (Commander-in-Chief)  
><strong>In-Game Nationality<strong>: Liberl


	8. Kirito: The Science of Arts

Author's Note:

I was struggling with the choice of whether I should post the chapters in an interweaving fashion or finish one major event in one line before moving on to the other. In actuality, I've been struggling with finding free time after getting back to work.

Asuna's Appendix A entry follows. I have added some explanations for her Circuits and spells. These would normally be contained in a separate appendix, but I decided to show it here because... well, that appendix is going to be very, very long.

* * *

><p>Asuna struck me as an interesting sort of girl. The fact was that the player base was so overwhelmingly male—almost an 80-20 split if one accounted for the entire population, and even more extreme in the people who started in Liberl. It was expected, as it was the continuing trend of the market for video games for the past two decades or so. My thought about that was that women just didn't find as much attraction in video games as men did, but I'm sure some sociologist somewhere would say that I was just shoving my foot into my throat.<p>

To me at the time, Asuna didn't seem like a girl who would line up on launch day to grab a copy of the game. I didn't know her very well at the time, and I was only drawing conclusions based on what I knew and what I thought to be the stereotype. I knew she wasn't a beta tester; Argus attempted to adjust the gender mixes for beta testers to get accurate data of Nerve Gear use from both sexes, and I knew I hadn't seen her in the test.

What would drive a person like her into a game like this? And now that we were all stuck in it, what would she do?

I was curious, so I tried to get to know her better. My attempts, though, turned out to be mostly futile because she was, to put it mildly, a bit defensive. I couldn't blame her; it's not like guys like me—single, teenage males who were into computer games—had a good reputation on the Internet to begin with. The World Wide Web had been around for almost half a century by then, so people in the First World who weren't connected to the Internet and its culture were mainly pensioners.

She did show up at 8 the next morning at the southern exit of Rolent City as promised. That was a promising sign, I thought, even though during the half-hour journey on foot to the Forest we barely talked at all. Regardless of how she felt about me approaching her and trying to help her, she saw the practical benefits of partying up and training in Mistwald. Experience from combat was shared, sure, but we could take on tougher monsters and larger packs of those wasps without risking our lives.

We were about 5 to 6 levels higher than the wasps by then. Normally a MMO player would pick a monster at around the same level range to get the most out of a fight while retaining survivability. Players in RPGs where there was only one life were much more conservative as their characters advanced to end-game level, but that was only because rebuilding a character who was level 97 out of 99 was much harder than rebuilding a character at level 10.

Players couldn't rebuild their characters when they themselves die with their avatars. When any player compared two pieces of gear, they would first compare the stats that would help with survivability before thinking about offensive capabilities. For example, I was dressed in a canvas long-coat with a steel cuirass and a mesh mail shirt on my torso, and I wore steel bracers and greaves. They were a bit heavy at first, but apparently wearing them helped increase my strength stat to a point where they felt about as light as leather armor.

Asuna, though, made different choices about her gear. I first noticed when we were taking on a pack of five wasps. She was wearing nothing but cloth armor: pink shirt, blue jeans and a pair of white gymnast shoes, the lightest options she could find. The light gear helped her immensely given her style of deadly precision combined with quick reflexes, so I suppose it was the right decision given her character build, but relying on pure agility for defense was risky business. If something like a skeleton archer could land one arrow on her, she would have been done for.

I used to think that she was a confident one. After all, she was certain of her abilities, and she never showed a sign of weakness. Now that I looked back at it, though, I couldn't help but wonder if she was feeling a little suicidal. I wouldn't blame her; there were dozens of people who committed suicide during the first day. If she were suicidal, she wouldn't be alone.

We finished another five-wasp pack and saw an egg-shaped monster lurking out from behind a tree. Both Asuna and I turned to face it, but it didn't recognize us. Monsters have rudimentary AI that had a dynamic threat recognition range tied to the player's level; we called it the "aggro radius". We were just barely outside its radius because our levels were so high, but that could change any time it decided to move.

Asuna sheathed her rapier with a swing to shake loose the insect ichor coating the blade. Then, she crouched down, her right hand on the hilt of the rapier and her left hand on the scabbard. I recognized the move; she had a Craft named "Linear" that consumed no CP but gave her an incredible boost of speed for a few meters as well as a small boost to damage on her first attack. It was a charging move that she could use to engage enemies while they were not aware, and that was the activation pose for it.

I grabbed her wrist and pulled her back a step. She turned and glared at me: "What are you doing? Let go!"

But I wasn't about to. That monster was far more dangerous than she realized, and I made it known: "Hold on a second. It's not a good idea to get too close to that monster."

"Why? It's just some random creature and it's about six levels below me." She was protesting, but she straightened up and relaxed a little.

"I'll show you. Just trust me for a bit and try not to get its attention," I breathed. The monster wandered a little toward us. We were teetering on the edge of its aggro radius. There was some time to show her what I really meant, but it wasn't much.

I took out my Tactical Orbment Device, an object we later called "Pocket Watch" for short. My only mean of attacking something from the distance was an Orbal Art. Kayaba originally planned to exclude magic in its entirety from the game to better emphasize on the physical capabilities of gamers, but then Argus realized that it would have been alienating an entire segment of the gamer population. So they added a compromise in the form of the device in my hand.

It was a palm-sized device that had a chain and a nub just like a pocket watch. The lid was the standard brushed brass design that had the symbol of the Epstein Company and the words "Enigma 0" carved on it in shiny raised letters. On the inside of the lid was a clock face and two small clock hands that showed the time; it seemed a little redundant to me because we had a HUD element that did the same thing. I flipped it open with one hand, showing the Orbment Quartz Circuits I installed in my less-than-optimal slot configuration.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm going to hit it with an Art." An Orbal Art required some preparation to cast. I traced the quartz line needed to cast the Art with the tip of my finger; that was the shortest line that consisted of the center socket and a socket with a blue Quartz Circuit. That activated the device through pressure and allowed Orbal energy to flow from the center socket to that Circuit. The system recognized it by showing a series of blue runes around me in a ring, indicating that I was indeed casting an Art. Then, I pointed it toward the monster with its lid open and called out the name of the attack: "Aqua Bleed."

The device vibrated slightly in my hand. The casing heated up a little. The center jewel—the black Time-type Circuit—lit up with a haze of azure light. The actual light was but a speck in front of the jewel; the haze was the mist of moisture the Art was gathering as the Pocket Watch fed energy into the circuit.

The egg-shaped monster turned toward us and took a small step in our direction. That was enough to put us into its aggro radius. Its transparent crimson shell glinted as a ray of sunlight struck it, but the most noticeable change was the flicker of flame inside the shell. It bloomed for a moment as if in surprise, and then it started channeling Orbal energy as well, evident by the red ring of symbols around it with the same pattern as the blue ring around me. A wide area on the ground around me was lit up and covered in a thin film of red, indicating the effective radius of the monster's Art.

The few seconds we had before it discovered us proved crucial. Orbal Arts, no matter the type, element or effect, required time to gather enough Orbal energy to cast. The Pocket Watch needed to spin up its internal mechanisms and extract energy from its reserves; the monsters, understandably, had a similar process.

My Art took shape and fired before the monster's did. A jet of water shot forward and arced up high into the air. Its path then curved, and it smashed down onto the top of the egg's shell. There was a clear sound of something brittle cracking as the bolt of water penetrated the shell into whatever it contained. The flicker of flame at the center of the egg dimmed and extinguished as the red affected area indicator on the ground around me faded.

It was dead. I heard Asuna let out a breath of relief as the loot window popped out on my screen. Even the loot window was designed to let players lower their guard; I thought to myself as I waited for the inevitable.

A high-pitched whine came from the monster's body in its dying throes. I could never forget the noise. It sounded like some energy weapon in science fiction powering up to fire: a low-pitched hum gradually turned into a high-pitched squeal over the short time span of about a second. It was the only aural cue Kayaba put in to warn players of monsters with similar behavior. If only some people could learn it before it was too late for them: I still had unpleasant memories whenever I heard it.

It detonated in a blast of fire and smoke. Shrapnel was everywhere; the shell of the monster was as tough and hard as glass, which was consistent with its transparency and also made it lethal when an explosion propelled it outward in a billion pieces. The power of the blast sprayed shards of it into the surroundings at high speed, lodging some pieces deep into barks of trees around us. Fortunately, we were far enough from the detonation that any shard would have disintegrated by the time it reached us, but the noise of the blast was enough to cause Asuna to shield her ears.

I flipped close the lid to my Pocket Watch and glanced at her. She was looking at the site of the detonation with disbelief. It was only natural, I thought; during the beta, I saw these explosions cut apart quite a few careless adventurers.

"…They explode when they die?" She breathed. I could see sweat rolling down her forehead. She knew as well as I did what would have happened had I not stopped her right there. Regardless of how suicidal she might have been, that consequence still gave her pause.

"Yeah," I nodded, putting the device back into my pocket, "All of them would have the same noise before they blow up. Some would have larger radii, but we can't really determine how large that would be, so the best way to kill them is to either use a ranged weapon like a bow or a gun, or use your Arts."

There was a moment of silence between us. Neither of us had a gun or knew how to use one. She slipped her hand into the inside of her cloak and fumbled a little before she pulled out her own Pocket Watch. Then, she turned to me and whispered, her amber eyes staring into mine.

"Teach me."

I was genuinely surprised. First of all, she didn't know how to cast an Art. Secondly, she managed to survive for over a month leveling as hard as I did without any knowledge about Orbal Arts. Kayaba certainly didn't put a lot of tutorials in, but normal people would have been curious about what the Pocket Watch that came with character creation was for. The information brokers would have spread that knowledge around, as it was an integral part of the game.

"How in the name of Aidios did you survive this long without knowing how to cast an Art?" My mouth acted faster than my brain did. I was hitting myself inside my head after the words came out. I even exclaimed using the name of the game's Goddess of the Sky. I probably couldn't have mangled the sentence more. Taking a deep breath, I cleared my throat but I didn't change the topic: "I'm certain I saw a section about it in the Manual."

There might have been a blush surfacing on Asuna's face when she looked at me. Her response came a second later: "I, uh, might have skipped that section when I read it."

I honestly did not know how to respond to that. Scratching my head, I surveyed the surroundings and saw no more monsters around: "Well, okay. Can you open that and show me first?"

She used both hands to clumsily flip open the device and turned it around as if she were holding a pretty seashell she found to her parents, and I was again surprised. Not because I saw six sealed sockets surrounding a central open ones for installing Quartz Circuits; no, that was what I expected to see from someone who had no idea what or how to cast an Orbal art.

Her Pocket Watch's configuration was the most beautiful I had ever seen. Only Renne's—and possibly Olivert's, Alfin's and Tio's—was better, and I wasn't sure if hers counted. Mine had three lines, each of which connected the central socket to one, two and three others respectively, with the central socket being restricted to Time-type Circuits. Since the number of Arts I could use was related to the type of Quartz Circuits I install on each line, it stood to reason that the longer a line was, the more powerful spells I could assemble and cast. Four sockets on a line was a decent number, but it was by no means the best. I suppose that was one reason I chose to focus on physical aspects of my character and used my Pocket Watch as a backup and buffing device.

Asuna's configuration had only one line. It spiraled from the central socket connecting all the others together. The only blemish was that two sockets were restricted to Space-type circuits. That was not such a big deal. One of the crucial Circuits for casters was Space-type; that series of Circuits lowered the costs for Arts by quite a bit. The other one could increase the effective area for area-type Arts and that one was Space-type as well. Her configuration also lent to a higher EP capacity. After the device was fully upgraded, her EP gauge would be over twice as long as mine.

With the right Circuits, she could do far more damage with powerful Arts than I could with my Crafts.

I immediately knew what to do. Staring right back into her eyes, I swallowed a little to contain my excitement: "How much Sepith do you have?"

"Eh?" She hesitated for a moment before opening her inventory: "You mean these crystal-looking things?"

"Yeah. How much do you have?" If she leveled as much as I did, she could be sitting on a mountain of Sepith, enough to open all her slots and then some.

"Uh… something like two thousand for each kind?" Like I thought.

"We're going back to the workshop right now. We're going to get this thing upgraded and have you practice using Arts." I left no room for debate as I turned around and strode toward the exit of the Forest. I wasn't going to let her potential go to waste, that was for sure.

We might all be stuck in a death trap of a game, but I'll be damned if I let her die because I couldn't teach her how to use all the tools she had.

* * *

><p>Every major population hub in Liberl—indeed, in all of Zemuria—had an Orbal workshop. Orbal energy was treated much like electricity except it needed neither transmission lines nor power plants, though both were still required if a piece of machinery needed large amounts of energy. It was also capable of causing some interesting phenomena such as bending space, altering time and causing illusions, but that was a minor point to how revolutionary it was supposed to be to Zemurian society. Devices that used this energy were described as "Orbment", thus the formal name for my Pocket Watch. It certainly rolled off the tongue.<p>

The Orbal workshop was the center of all technological activities within a town. Most of the time it was too small to be called a "factory" like some people would prefer; only the one in Zeiss was the size of a factory, and that building had five floors above ground. When someone's Orbment would break down, be it an Orbal stove or a large Orbal sniper rifle, they would be brought to the workshop to be repaired. They had the equipment to synthesize Quartz Circuits from Sepith pieces and to modify the Pocket Watch through opening or upgrading its sockets.

Initially, the workshops were run by NPCs. That was the case when we arrived at the Melders' Workshop in Rolent after a twenty-minute sprint from the Forest. We nearly barreled into a few players on our way. Well, it was more Asuna matching my speed, but I didn't notice how fast I ran at the time.

The workshop was a small stone building situated opposite to the Bracer's Guild branch office on the center street of Rolent, slightly to the south of the town square where the clock tower stood. It had two stories and an attic, but only the first floor was open for business at the time. The floor couldn't have covered more than 50 square meters, and it felt even more cramped after placing a large elbow-shaped bar in the middle of the room and stuffing the area behind it with machines. Two NPCs stood at each arm of the elbow; one handled anything related to household appliances and streetlights, and the other was for Tactical Orbment Devices.

"Here we are." The bell attached to the door let out a startled jingle as I opened it. The place was nowhere close to as crowded as it was during the first week as most people accumulated and spent their Sepith here. At the current stage, the workshop could only make the most basic of Quartz Circuits, but that was all we needed.

"I wondered what this building was when I passed by here," Asuna let out a small sigh when she entered the building as well, patting down her cloak and flipping back the hood to reveal her face. "So this is the Orbal workshop?"

"Hello and welcome to Melders' Workshop! What can I do for you today?" As soon as I approached the NPC, he turned to me and put on the friendliest smile he could muster as his AI instructed. At the same time, three white floating panels opened in front of me. They were designed with the same style as the system menu, but they had a different function. The small panel on the top left had options "Quartz", "Sockets", "Exchange" and "Cancel"; depending on what I selected there, the large left panel showed options like which socket to open or which Circuits to synthesize along with the Sepith costs to each operation. The large window on the right showed my inventory count of Quartz and Sepith.

I picked "Cancel" on the top left window. "Thank you for your business! Please come again!" The NPC nodded to me with a smile, and then ignored me entirely as he—it—returned to its default neutral disposition and a rather stiff standing pose.

"Pick 'Sockets', and then pick the sockets you want to open. The farther a socket is down a line, the more costly it becomes," I turned to Asuna, who stood behind me and saw all my actions. Verbal instructions in that case were probably redundant, but I did it anyway.

She approached the NPC without a word. "Hello and welcome to Melders' Workshop! What can I do for you today?" He repeated with the same intonation, the same smile, the same flick of his hair and the same glitter in his eyes. The windows opened in front of her as it did for me. She flinched a little, seemingly surprised by the appearance. Her hand hovered over the options in a half-fist as she hesitated for a moment, before she extended a finger and pressed the "Socket" button on the little window.

"You probably have enough Sepith to open all of them and some leftover to make a few Circuits," I said, glancing over at her interface. The system blanked out the large panel on the right to preserve privacy, but I could see her pick and open sockets on her device one by one. The EP gauge below her HP bar on the party column extended further and further out until it was about 1.5 times the length of my own gauge, but most of it was empty.

"Um… which Circuits should I get?" She glanced to me. I peeked over her left arm at the left window, which had switched to the list of Quartz Circuits when she picked the "Quartz" option.

I couldn't blame her. I was confused as well when I first entered the workshop during beta testing, but months of experience had given me an idea of what to get: "I suggest you get the 'EP 1' and 'EP Cut 1' Circuits first, because those are essential to extend the use of your device. Next would be the 'Cast 1' Circuit to reduce your channeling time. Then I'd grab another Space-type Circuit like 'Hit 1' to fill your other Space socket…"

"Hmm, hmm…" She picked the Circuits I indicated. Sepith was deducted from her pool until it shrank to a pitiful two digits. I saw a slight wince on her as her month-long effort to accumulate these shards was spent in a few minutes. I would have had the same reaction if I were in her shoes.

"Thank you for your business! Please come again!" The NPC's default goodbye was muffled as the door of the workshop closed behind us with a rather violent string of bell rings. Asuna was still examining her inventory, seemingly spaced out. I had to nudge her out of the way of a running NPC deliveryman so that she wouldn't be knocked over.

Moments later we were in the town square. It was, as its name indicated, a square at the center of the City paved with white slabs of stone. Long benches and chairs surrounded it, and the Clock Tower sat a little bit off of its center. At the moment, only a few players roamed its vicinities, but I was certain that in a short bit the square would start filling up with players coming back from training trips for lunch.

We picked a bench and sat down; she was looking at the inventory all the while. There was a moment of awkward silence as I debated with myself about what to do next. Did she need help? She looked like a smart woman, but sometimes even smart people needed help. I myself wasn't too sure how to use the circuits until someone else helped me out with it.

Then again, she wasn't exactly warm to me throughout the day. I wasn't even sure how much interaction she wanted with me. "Read the signals," they said. I would have done so already if I were capable of doing it.

Well, there was only one way to find out! I took a deep breath and worked up my posture before turning to address her with a tap on her shoulder: "You still awake?"

"Huh? Oh!" She seemed startled. Maybe she was really out of it: "I was looking for how to put these things into my Tactical Orbment Device, but I couldn't find the interface options for it…"

Oh, so that was the problem. I smiled a little with a sigh of relief: "There's, uh, really no interface option for that. Can you bring out your device and a Circuit, say, the 'EP Cut 1'?"

She did as I told her. The Pocket Watch she had seemed a little big in her pale slender hand. She flipped open the lid with both hands, and then she used her right hand to bring out the Circuit.

The golden object materialized in her right palm with a burst of iridescent light. It was a sphere made from Space Sepith with a slightly flattened bottom, onto which the letters "EP Cut 1" and "S1 T2 M1" were engraved on two different lines. The sockets on the Pocket Watch had a flat bottom as well; the flat side on the Quartz Circuit was meant to mate with the socket there. On the top and bottom of the socket were two metal protrusions; they held the Circuit in place through pressure like a pair of clips.

"Insert the Circuit into the center socket, the one with the golden clips. Don't worry about the flat side; you can rotate the Circuit in place later to lock it in." The colors of the clips indicated the attribute affinity of the sockets. The system acted to prevent a user from mis-configuring their device by inserting Circuits of the wrong type into sockets with affinities.

Asuna pressed the flat side into the socket. The clips opened briefly and then closed with a satisfying "snap". "That's it?" she asked as she spun the Circuit in place to a second, much quieter "snap".

"Yeah. That second snap makes sure your Circuit is properly installed." The midday sun reflected dully on the matte orb. Circuits with the four basic types—Earth, Water, Wind and Fire—were glossy in appearance much like glass beads, but the Circuits with Time, Space or Mirage types were matte on the outside.

She installed the rest of the circuits in the same manner and then turned toward me: "How do I know which spells I have?"

"You can try tapping the seven Circuits in the order they formed the line, starting from the center. There should be a small window popping up above the center Circuit to pick an Art." That was a feature to assist new players who had not remembered every Art's name and how to read them properly. Casting Arts was like calling out your attacks, except the volume of that call made no difference whatsoever.

Her slender finger traced the line on her Pocket Watch. The Circuits lit up on their own one by one as it touched them. Once she touched the last Circuit, there was a small panel that popped out on top, showing her a list of Arts she could use: "I can't use anything but the healing spell right now."

"Yeah, because we're not in combat. Once in combat, you can use the same steps to cast attack Arts at monsters by pointing it at the intended target. The Art will track and automatically hit as long as you keep it pointed at the target until the moment it is cast."

"Until the moment it's cast… you mean there's a casting time for it?"

"Yeah. The more complex the Art is, the longer time it takes from activation to cast. You have to at least keep the Quartz Circuits exposed during that time, so usually once an Art is activated we can't do much else." That was the worst part about using Arts when playing solo: because there were no other targets for the monsters in the area, a player would pretty much be helpless when casting it. Some, like Schera, could actually move and dodge attacks while casting, but talented players like her were few and far between.

"I see. Hmm…" she mused with a drawn-out hum before snapping close the lid of her Pocket Watch. "How do I refill the EP gauge? Right now I only have enough for one healing spell and it's not growing. Does it refill by itself?"

"No, but there are other ways to fill it up." I shook my head and tapped open the inventory menu. There were a couple of EP Charge capsules I bought from the drug store in town. One materialized in my hand. It was a cylindrical object about as big as an AA battery, and it has a socket on one end that mated with the nub on the Pocket Watch. On the side of the cylinder, there was a blue gauge with numbers from 0 to 100, with 0 on the socketed end of the small device.

"This is an EP Charge capsule, a portable storage device like a battery. It's one way to recharge your Pocket Watch when you're on the move," I passed the capsule to her.

She held it up to her eyes and examined it closely: "How do I use it?"

"Press it against the, uh, crown of your Watch and you'll see your gauge refill by 100 points, but it can only be used once and it's kind of expensive." One of these cost me 300 Mira. It was more than the plate of pasta we had during the previous night.

She was about to put the method to test, but hesitated after hearing my words: "What's the other way?"

"There are devices installed on certain maps that could connect with your Watch with wires and charge it. Most hotels would also have them. We could use them as much as we wanted, and they could recharge everything in a rather short period of time." Those proved incredibly useful during the beta test, especially before we needed to take on field bosses.

"It does mean that I have to be careful with where and when I cast…" She whispered to herself, still looking down at the capsule. "Big spells would be out of the question. A few quick healing spells in the middle or a strength-boosting spells could work…"

"Well, a lot of people would partner up with you…" I squeezed out a smile. I wasn't kidding; someone with this good a configuration was far too rare to find. The best ones I had seen during beta testing had two lines of six and two sockets with one socket restriction.

Besides, she was an actual girl in an MMO. From what I saw, they were rare as a male calico cat.

"Hmph. I wonder about that." She let out a heavy sigh and stood up. The Abend was by then filled with players trying to grab lunch. Those who could not find seats had sat on benches all around the town square and munched on a sandwich or a piece of bread. "Let's go back. If we're lucky, we won't have competition there yet."

"Um, don't you want to have some food first?" Having an empty hunger meter for a long time would stack debuffs on the player every 15 seconds until they had something to eat. I was still okay because I had a bit much in the morning. Three buns and two glasses of milk made for quite the breakfast. Even so, I probably would need some food in about an hour. I would rather not have her stand guard while I filled my own bar.

"We don't have time for that," she snapped at me with a glare icy enough that I shivered under the midday sun. Then, she tapped her menus to bring out a piece of black bread: "This'll fill it up enough for a couple of hours. I'll eat it on the way there."

There was a little frown and a genuine wince on her face as she took a glance at that piece of bread. It was black bread made from the coarsest of rye flour. I recognized the item because I too had been eating that for the past month. For its cost—which was 10 Mira apiece—it was rather filling, but its taste was slightly better than horse manure (again, don't ask me how I know that). For one thing, it was about as "whole wheat" as one could get in bread; that is, I often found whole grains of rye in the bread among other things. For another, it was really, really difficult to swallow without some liquid washing it down, because the husks and the occasional grain scraped against the esophagus like a thick metal brush.

I sighed. What was the rush? Fifteen minutes of time for lunch wouldn't hurt our chances of getting a quiet spot within the Forest. I mean, it was a big forest, spawn points were common and I hadn't seen another soul inside the forest since I started training there a week ago. Other than her, of course, but that was beside the point: "Slow down, would you? It's not like five minutes is going to make a difference in the long run…"

"We're wasting time here." Wow, she sounded like a power gamer, but she probably wasn't one. After all, a power gamer wouldn't have ignored the section on Arts in Argo's Manual and go a month without even using her Device once.

"Dedicating every waking moment to leveling isn't going to help much," I put my hands behind my head and leaned back in the bench. "It's only been a month. If the Seven Treasures of Aidios were that easy to find, we'd all be out of here already."

According to the most recent news I got at the time, nobody was quite sure where or even how to get information on the Treasures, but we did have a couple of clues from the game's setting. The Septian Church was responsible for ending the so-called Cataclysm more than a millennium ago that saw the Treasures destroyed, sealed or otherwise disappeared from the world. As a result, some people had already started climbing the ladder of quests in the Church, hoping it would have things that would divulge the nature of the Treasures in its vast library of materials. Likewise, some others were in the middle of a quest chain that would see them replace NPCs at the top of the Liberl military and government. I was certain that people in the Republic, the Empire and the Autonomous State mirrored such movements. Government archives—especially classified ones—were good places to hide crucial information like this. But other than that, Kayaba left few clues.

He probably thought that leaving Dragon Balls around the world and someone would become Goku.

That prick.

In any case, my words dumped a nice bucket of ice water over her enthusiasm. Her shoulders sagged like a deflated balloon when she turned around, her hood still over her head of chestnut-colored hair. She had to have realized it as well, but it wasn't until the moment I said it that she had to face it. At least, that was what I thought until she started speaking after taking a deep breath: "If all of us worked harder then we would've found at least some of them already."

"Like I said, five minutes isn't going to make that big a difference." I brought up my inventory menu and took out a quarter bun of the same black bread she had in her hand, a tin tub of cream cheese and a glass bottle of milk. The advantage of VRMMO was that interfaces to items could be made familiar and intuitive; using a bottle of milk was as simple as opening the bottle and either drink it or pour it into a container.

She let out a low, impatient growl. Soft white gel-like solid flowed out of my glowing fingertips after I tapped the tub and picked the "spread" option from the popup menu. Multiple interfaces to the same object existed for convenience; I could achieve the same result if I had equipped a butter knife to scoop out the creamy paste from the tub, but I didn't have to.

I caught her eyeing the substance as I finished coating the bread with it. With a small smile, I picked up the container and tossed it toward her: "Want some? I got it from the grocery store."

She caught it even though my aim was wildly off. Doing the same thing I did, she coated a thin layer of cheese on top of her bread and took a tentative bite. The frown that she had when she stared at that piece of bread disappeared almost immediately as she wolfed down the piece, occasionally adding more cheese onto it until the empty tub disappeared in a burst of shattered polygons.

"See? It makes the bread much more palatable…" I was going to continue, but I see her face redden from top to bottom as she tried repeatedly to swallow. Sighing, I pulled out another bottle of milk from my inventory and tossed it to her as well: "This'll help smoothing it down a little."

She caught the bottle of milk even though tears were teetering around the edge of her eyes. Quickly opening it, she chugged it down as if she just came out of a public bath.

I was mildly amused. Virtual avatars didn't need to breathe; there was no reason for it to choke. More importantly, why did Kayaba put in that particular functionality?

"Slow down, would you? It's not like that bread would grow legs and run away if you don't eat it fast enough," I chuckled a little as I finished my food as well.

"W-W-We wasted enough time!" Asuna turned around and started walking away with somewhat mechanical strides. That deepening shade of red on her face was more than enough entertainment I needed that day.

* * *

><p><strong>Appendix A<strong>

**In-Game Name**: Asuna

**Nickname**: The Flash, the Magus Fencer, Ms. Artillery

**Level**: 150

**Orbment Configuration**: 7 (Enigma), 9 (Arcus Prototype)

**Orbment Affinity**: Space x2 (Enigma), Space x2 + Fire (Arcus Prototype)

**S-Crafts**: Star Splash, Burst Cast

**Favorite Master Quartz**:

Criminal  
><span>Stats at Max Level: 1400 HP, 240 EP, 80 STR, 100 DEF, 160 ATS, 100 ADF  
>Elemental Requirements Fulfilled: Fire 10, Time 5<br>Master Art: Rune of Perturbation  
>Effects at Max Level:<br>1. Offensive type Arts are guaranteed to Critically hit.  
>2. On Offensive Arts Hit: 30% to bestow Nightmare for 15 seconds.<br>3. Reduce the casting time of Fire-attribute Arts by 50%.

Pandora  
><span>Stats at Max Level: 1500 HP, 240 EP, 60 STR, 100 DEF, 160 ATS, 100 ADF  
>Elemental Requirements Fulfilled: Mirage 10, Space 5<br>Master Art: Rune of Illusion  
>Effects at Max Level:<br>1. Increase EP consumption of Offensive Arts by 50%.  
>2. Offensive Arts have +100% damage.<br>3. Offensive Arts have +50% area of effect.

**Most-Used Art:**

Dark Matter  
>Cost: 90 EP<br>Elemental Requirement: Space 7  
>Base Cast Time: 5 seconds<br>Target: Circular, 6m radius  
>Base Damage: 120<br>Other Effect: Attract all affected object toward the target and debuff with -25% movement speed for 15 seconds.

Cross Crusade  
>Cost: 210 EP<br>Elemental Requirement: Space 15, Fire 5  
>Base Cast Time: 7 seconds<br>Target: Self-centered, 100m radius  
>Base Damage: 300<p>

Altea Cannon  
>Cost: 450 EP<br>Elemental Requirement: Space 21, Mirage 11, Fire 6  
>Base Cast Time: 7 seconds<br>Target: Self-centered, 100m radius  
>Base Damage: 400<br>Other Effect: -25% ATS/ADF for 15 seconds.

Holy Eden—Paradise Lost  
>Cost: 100% of EP<br>Elemental Requirement: Lost Magic granted by Orb of the Sacred Salvation  
>Base Cast Time: 10 seconds<br>Target: Self-centered, all enemies  
>Base Damage: 1000<br>Other Effect: 200% chance to Confuse, -25% STR and DEF for 3 minutes. Remove all Buffs from affected targets. Cannot be reflected.

**Weapons:**  
><span>Light of Zemuria<span>: One-handed rapier, +1000 STR, +15% ATS, +10% Movement Speed, +10% Attack Speed. Hit Ignores Armor. Made by Lisbeth. Attack Type: Stab S

**Skills:** Rapier MAX, Cloth Armor MAX, Parry MAX, Awareness MAX, Acrobatics 912, Fast Sprint MAX, Cooking MAX, Sewing 183

**Extra Skills:** Arts Boost MAX, Quick Cast MAX, Lost Arts MAX

**In-Game Affiliation:** Bracer's Guild (Senior Bracer Rank A)

**In-Game Nationality:** Liberl


End file.
